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SCHWEGLER'S 
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



EDINBURGH : PRINTED BY T. AND A. CONSTABLE, 
FOR 

EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. 

LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO v 

CAMBRIDGE MACMILLAN AND CO. 

GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE. 



I 



HANDBOOK 



OF THE 



HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 



1/ 

BY DR. ALBERT SCHWEGLER. 



TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY 

JAMES HUTCHISON STIRLING, LL.D. 

AUTHOR OF ( THE SECRET OF HEGEL,' ETC. 



i My highest wish is to find within, 
The God whom I find everywhere without.' 

Kepler. 



FIFTH EDITION 

CAREFULLY COMPARED WITH THE EIGHTH GERMAN EDITION, 1873, 
AND CORRECTED ACCORDINGLY. 



EDINBURGH: 

EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS 
1874. 



18 



9$ 



CONTENTS. 



translator's preface, .... 
preface to the third edition, . 
sketch of the life of schwegler, 

i. — general idea of the history of philo 

SOPHY, .... 
II.— DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT, . 
III.— A PRELIMINARY VIEW OF PRE-SOCRATIC 

PHILOSOPHY, 
IV.— THE EARLIER IONIC PHILOSOPHERS, 
V.— THE PYTHAGOREANS, 
VI.— THE ELEATICS, 
VII.— HERACLITUS, 
VIII. — EMPEDOCLES, 
IX.— THE ATOMISTS, 

X.— ANAXAGORAS, 
XL— THE SOPHISTS, 

XII.— SOCRATES, .... 
XIII.— THE INCOMPLETE SOCRATTCS, 
XIV.— PLATO, .... 

XV.— THE OLDER ACADEMY, 
XVI.— ARISTOTLE, . . 

XVII.— STOICISM, .... 

XVIII. — EPICUREANISM, 
XIX.— SCEPTICISM AND THF LATER ACADEMY, 
XX.— THE ROMANS, 
XXI. — NEO-PLATONISM, 
XXII.— CHRISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM, 
XXIII.— TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY, 
XXIV.— DESCARTES, .... 



11 
14 
19 

22 

25 

27 

30 

39 

53 

58 

93 

94 

123 

131 

134 

137 

138 

143 

146 

156 



CONTENTS. 



XXV.— GEULINX AND MALEBRANCHE, 
XXVI.— SPINOZA, 

XXVII.— IDEALISM AND REALISM, . 
XXVIII,— LOCKE, 
XXIX.— HUME, 
XXX.— CONDILLAC, 
XXXI. — HELVETIUS, 
XXXII. —FRENCH ILLUMINATION AND MATERIALISM, 
XXXIII. —LEIBNITZ, . 
XXXIV. — BERKELEY, 
XXXV.— WOLFF, 

XXXVI.— THE GERMAN ILLWMINATION, 
XXXVII. — TRANSITION TO KANT, 
XXXVIII.— KANT, 

XXXIX.— TRANSITION TO THE POST-KANTIAN PHILO 
SOPHY, . 
XL.— JACOBI, 
XLL— FICHTE, 
XLII. — HERBART, . 
XLIII. — SCHELLING, 
XLIV.— TRANSITION TO HEGEL, 
XL V.— HEGEL, 

ANNOTATIONS, 

I.— GENERAL IDEA OF THE HISTORY OF PHILO 
SOPHY, . 
II. AND III. — DIVISION AND PRELIMINARY VIEW, 
IV.— THE EARLIER IONIC PHILOSOPHERS, 

V.— THE PYTHAGOREANS, 
VI. —THE ELEATICS, 
VII. — HERACLITUS, 
VIII. — EMPEDOCLES, 
IX.— THE ATOMISTS, 
X.— ANAXAGORAS, 
XL— THE SOPHISTS, 
XII. — SOCRATES, . 
XIII. —PLATO, 
XIV.— ARISTOTLE, 
XV.— THE POST- ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY, 



CONTENTS. 



XVI. — TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY, 


PAGE 

403 


XVII. — DESCARTES, . 








404 


XVIII.— MALEBRANCHE, 








407 


XIX.— SPINOZA, 








403 


XX. — HOBBES, 








411 


XXI. — JOHN LOCKE, 








413 


XXII.— DAVID HUME, 








415 


XXni.— LEIBNITZ, 








416 


XXIV.— BERKELEY, . 








417 


XXV.— KANT, 








422 


XXVI.— JACOBI, 








426 


XXVIL— FICHTE, 








427 


XXVHI.— HERB ART, . 








428 


XXIX. — SCHELLING, . 








428 


XXX.— HEGEL, 








429 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES— 

I.— WHY THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ENDS 

WITH HEGEL, AND NOT WITH COMTE, . 446 

TJ.— MR. LEWES'S ACCUSATION OF ATHEISM 

AGAINST HEGEL, .... 463 

III.— PANTHEISM AND PAGANISM, . . 473 

INDEX, ....... 477 



TEANSLATOE'S PEEFACE. 



THE reader will readily understand that this transla- 
tion is a work of gratitude. The assistance of this 
little book to the student of Philosophy I have elsewhere 
pronounced ' indispensable ; ' and this is the result of a 
genuine experience. The resolution being once taken, 
again, to introduce the work to an English public, it 
appeared right that this should be effected by a new and 
native translation, rather than by the mere reproduction 
of a foreign one. Of the merits of this latter, Mr. Seelye's 
American translation, I cannot say a word : my transla- 
tion has been executed without my seeing it, and in 
absolute independence generally. Perhaps I may be 
allowed to say this, however, that I am informed by the 
German publisher that the American translation follows 
the Jlrst German edition, 'whilst the present fifth, edition 
contains a variety of improvements and additions.' From 
the same authority, writing some months ago, I learn that 
1 of the German issue 20,000 copies have been already 
sold, certainly a rare event in the case of a rigorously 
scientific book, and the best proof of its excellence.' How 
this ' excellence ' has originated will be understood at 
once, when we consider that Schwegler, a remarkably 
ripe, full man, and possessed of the gift of style, wrote 
this History, so to speak, at a single stroke of the pen, as, 
in the first instance, an article for an Encyclopaedia. A 
first, almost extemporized, draught of this nature usually 



x TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 

constitutes the happiest core for a larger and separate 
work. But originate as it may, the fact of this excellence 
is certain. The work has been already translated both 
in America and Denmark ; its sale in its own country 
has, for such works (as we have seen), been unexampled ; 
and we learn from Professor Erdmann (Preface to his 
Grundriss of the History of Philosophy) that its extraor- 
dinary success with students has given rise to various 
imitations. What I have found it myself, I have in- 
dicated in the opening of the Annotations at page 345. 

As regards either the translation or the annotation, I 
know not that there remains anything to be said here. 
The reader will perhaps dislike the coinage beent / but he 
cannot dislike it more than I do myself, and if existent 
could have served the turn, it would never have happened. 
This I believe to be the only coinage, however, and it will 
be found fully explained in the note on the Eleatics at 
page 359. I had intended to say a word in deprecation 
of Mr. Lewes's distinction in reference to what he calls 
the objective and the subjective methods, as well as of 
his general view of Philosophy. For this, space at pre- 
sent fails however, and I must hope for another oppor- 
tunity. The reader will probably not be surprised if I 
say now, nevertheless, that I regard neither distinction 
nor view as possessed of a vestige of foundation. 
Edinburgh, September 1867. 

In this, the second edition, the annotation will be found 
completed, and an Index added. Prefixed also there is a 
sketch of the Life of Schwegler, epitomized from the bio- 
graphical notice of him which, written by his friend Zeller, 
the illustrious historian of Greek Philosophy, is inserted 
in the third volume of Schwegler's Roman History. 

Edinburgh, February 1868. 



XI 



PEEFACE TO THE THIED EDITION. 



ADVANTAGE has been taken of the present oppor- 
tunity for the introduction into the body of the 
work of a considerable number of corrections which were 
found necessary. Some of these it has been planned to 
signalize here, and one or two others may be at the 
same time referred to. 

The phrase ' Gothic dome,' page 154, has been objected 
to, as itself Gothic, seeing that, in English, dome means 
cupola, and there is no such thing in Gothic archi- 
tecture. My reply is simple : In using the phrase, the 
translator had really not a cupola but a cathedral-interior 
in his eye, and he sees no reason against extending the 
English dome into the German Dom, domus, to say nothing 
of dco/ia, being, presumably, the warrant in the one case 
as in the other. 

At page 218, line 18 from top, the two words notions 
and without will be found hitherto to have accidentally 
exchanged places. The occurrence and its rectification 
are very simple matters ; still the former made such con- 
fusion of the sense that it went far to lead one of our 
most distinguished metaphysicians almost up to an accu- 
sation of misunderstanding, on the part of the translator, 
of one of Kant's most common and salient dicta. 

The Greek phrase translated at page 362 by ■ the more 
is the thought ,' perhaps scarcely bears the addition of the 
article ( ( the ') to the noun * thought, 1 voijixa in the original 



xii PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 

being without a to, and Zeller having translated it by 
Gedarike alone without the so usual der. The 'the,' 
nevertheless, seems to let in quite a satisfactory light, if 
at all admissible. 

I have hazarded the expression, at page 399, that * in 
Germany the discussion of the order, dates, and authen- 
ticity of the Platonic dialogues,' will probably settle in 
the end into Schwegler's ' relative ruling,' ' though not 
original to him.' I have been requested to explain that 
such a settlement gets, in the progress of the discussion, 
less and less likely; Ueberweg, Schaarschmidt, and 
others, reasoning cogently against the legitimacy of 
ascribing to Plato several most important dialogues 
usually so ascribed. I may remark, in this connexion, 
that I was lately struck with the strong things said in 
advance (though not, probably, of Socher in 1820) by the 
illustrious Whewell, specially of the Parmenides. 

It is necessary, by a word here on Schwegler's ' His- 
tory of Greek Philosophy,' to supply an omission in the 
sketch of the life of Schwegler abridged from Zeller. 
This work has been printed, since the lamented death of 
its author, under the able editorship of Dr. K. Kostlin, 
whose various additions are so felicitously conceived and 
conveyed in the very spirit of his deceased friend that it 
would be difficult or impossible to recognise and distinguish 
them. This, too, has proved a success, and has been so 
much relished by Schwegler's fellow-countrymen, as to 
have passed into another (and by Kostlin much improved) 
edition. I am disposed to consider it an unexcelled 
work. Schwegler knows and can accomplish the exact 
to perfection, and the exact is at once full to the fullest, 
and short to the shortest. Schwegler's exact, indeed, can 
also be characterized as clear to the clearest. Now, of 
such exactitude the history in question may be regarded 
as a perfect specimen. Ueberweg, in reference to the 
book the translation of which is now before the reader 
(and since which translation it [1873] counts three more 



PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION, xiii 

editions in Germany), may be found speaking of 'the 
introduction, generally acknowledged to be excellent 
in its kind, by which Schwegler, too early lost to us by 
a premature death, rendered an inestimable service 
to the study of the history of philosophy ;' and we 
have already seen in what terms Zeller refers to his 
4 gift of style,' and the other perhaps unrivalled excel- 
lences of Schwegler. Well, in no work ever written 
by Schwegler can these excellences be found in greater 
perfection than in this * History of Greek Philosophy.' 
It is the story of a man who has long digested all, 
and gives easy emission to all without the neces- 
sity of either changing or repeating a word. There 
is not a word too much, indeed, in the whole book, and 
not a line that is not intelligible at sight : it is the last 
triumph of the plainness of ripe knowledge. Plato and 
Aristotle are here reduced into that easy every-day bulk 
of common-sense that any hand can grasp. It is this 
luminous succinctness of Schwegler that extends to him 
a ready triumph, so far, over all his brother historians. 
Erdmann possesses a harnessed dialectic of expression 
that is peculiarly masterly and all his own, but it often 
escapes the reader by the very attention which for inter- 
pretation it demands, and his work is at least three times 
the size of this present book of Schwegler' s. Much the 
same thing, so far as magnitude is concerned, may be said 
of Ueberweg's Ground-plan of the history of philosophy, 
while, as regards style, however excellent, however faith- 
ful, however careful, be the writing of Ueberweg, it is 
not the brilliantly transparent, and yet perfectly full 
expression of Schwegler. Nor, on the whole, despite the 
brevity, can either Erdmann or Ueberweg be said to 
excel Schwegler in point of matter — discounting the fact, 
that is, that both the former treat of, what Schwegler 
does not, the middle-age philosophy, the subordinate 
followers of the greater moderns, and the post-Hegelian 
German contributions. The middle-age philosophy cer- 



xiv PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 

tainly deserves to be known, and the history of schools 
is at least curious, but I am not sure, great though some 
of the names be, that there is much profit to be drawn 
from what has yet followed Hegel anywhere. For this 
middle-age philosophy, and for their own merits other- 
wise, both the work of Erdmann and that of Ueberweg 
ought to be translated into English, and I am glad that 
we may soon expect this service, at least as regards one of 
them, Ueberweg, at the hands of a distinguished American, 
For myself, I should have been glad to have translated 
the middle age part of Ueberweg's introduction (as a quite 
excellent and, indeed, indispensable work), and after 
that (and what I have already done) I know no German 
books, on the history of philosophy, which I should be at 
all tempted to translate, unless the history of Greek 
philosophy by Schwegler, and, perhaps above all, the his- 
tory of philosophy by the master himself, Hegel. 

Edinburgh, May 1871. 



SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF SCHWEGLER. 
AfSJ 

ALBERT SCHWEGLER, a Suabian, like Hegel and 
so many other deeper Germans of late, was born 
February 10, 1819. His father, a country clergyman, 
who, with scanty means, did his best for his family, 
*began himself the education of the boy, and subjected 
him, in general, to a discipline so severe that it left its 
marks on his character, and was borne in his memory 
for life. In his seventeenth year, Schwegler, as a 
student of theology, entered the University of Tubingen. 
Here he greatly distinguished himself. His intellect 
was unusually quick, ready, and retentive ; his industry 
constant, his perseverance iron : he took many prizes, 
and, where certain essays were concerned, not without 
the higher compliment of express thanks. His univer- 
sity career accomplished, though amid many hardships, 
for his father's death in 1839 left a family, always 
straitened, in the most pressing difficulties, Schwegler 
— passing by Munich, Prague, and Vienna — went to 
Berlin, in the hope not only of scientific but of pecu- 
niary profit. In this he was disappointed, and, visiting 
Holland, Belgium, and the Rhine, he returned home 
in a few months, to be presently found in Tubingen 
again, supporting himself as he could by services in a 
village church, by correcting the press, and by literature. 
One success in the last capacity enabled him (having 
qualified himself as a privatim docens in 1843) to spend 
some months in Italy, principally at Rome. On his 
return in 1847, he received the appointment of a Libra* 



xvi SKETCH OF THE 

rian, and, in 1848, that of Extraordinary Professor of 
Roman Literature and Archaeology, in the Evangelical 
Seminary of Tubingen. 

The literary works of Schwegler are as follows : — 
His first appearance in print was with an essay in memory 
of Hegel, in the Journal for the Elegant World (1839). 
In 1841, he published his prize essay, Montanism and 
the Christian Church of the Second Century, an excellent 
work, which had immediate success. In 1842, he criti- 
cised Neander's work on the ' Apostolic Era ' in the Ger- 
man, and the * latest Johannine Literature* in the 
Theological Year-books. In this last periodical he 
also wrote several valuable papers after his return to 
Tubingen. Here, too, he became, in 1843, the editor 
of the Annals of the Present, and in this capacity 
wrote many admirable political papers. In 1845, his 
Post- Apostolic Age was published, and that work was 
followed by the Clementine Homilies in 1847, and the 
Eusebian Church History in 1852. In 1847 and 1848 
we have his Metaphysic of Aristotle, and in the former 
year the first issue of his Handbook of the History of 
Philosophy, in the Stuttgart Encyclopaedia. His latest 
work was the Roman History, which at his death was 
left incomplete. Of these works, the most important 
are Montanism, the Post-Apostolic Age, the History of 
Philosophy, the Aristotle, and the Roman History; but 
the tact and judgment, the courage and considerate- 
ness, the consistent adhesion to principles, the manly 
ripeness, the truth, penetration, and largeness of poli- 
tical perception, the clearness, power, and brilliancy 
of style, the irresistible polemic, which he dis- 
played as editor of the Annals of the Present, demon- 
strated that Schwegler had the capacity likewise of 
becoming a master among Publicists. The work on 
Montanism showed acute intellect and much penetrative 
power of erudite research ; it gave to think to the most 
accomplished judges. The Post- Apostolic Age was writ- 
ten in six months, and this fact, in view of the excel- 



LIFE OF SCHWEGLER. xvii 

lence of the work itself (a work not final in its sphere, 
however), bespeaks that ' iron industry, that ease of ex- 
pression, and that complete mastery of the material, of 
which, and in an extraordinary degree, Schwegler might 
justly boast.' The Aristotle is characterized by accuracy 
and acuteness in selection and correction of the text, 
by successful interpretation of difficult passages, and by 
penetrating exposition of philosophical ideas. Beside 
the commentary of Bonitz it will always retain its own 
value. Of the ' short history of philosophy' Zeller tells 
us that by its ' spirited, luminous, and easy treatment of 
the subject it won for itself such approbation, that in 
the course of ten years three large editions, amounting 
to no less than 7000 copies, were found necessary,' — a 
success which, as we know, the next ten years have only 
increased. It is the Roman History, however, that has 
most attracted the admiration of experts — an admiration 
all the keener for the background of regret over the in- 
completeness left by the untimely death. Schwegler, 
it would seem, possessed, and in an extraordinary degree, 
all the leading qualifications that are requisite in an 
historian. 'His clear understanding,' says Zeller, 'to 
which distinct ideas were a necessity, could as little 
dispense with the terra firma of facts, as his vivid ima- 
gination with the visible shapes of the actual. The 
collecting of masses of materials was a delightful em- 
ployment for his learned industry, as their analysis for 
his penetration and sagacity. His power of comprehen- 
sive survey was most specially attracted by the con- 
sideration, his architectonic talent by the scientific 
arrangement, his gift of style by the description, of 
historical situations and combinations.' Accordingly, the 
Roman History, in its kind, is a work of the greatest ex- 
cellence. Zeller, in its reference, speaks of such trans- 
parency, of such complete control of the materials, of 
such assured insight, of such power of narrative, as must 
make every one regret to see ' so grandly-planned, so 
masterly -executed a work, left there a fragment only.' 



xviii LIFE OF SCHWEGLER. 

At school, Schwegler was a quick, lively, kindly boy, 
docile, attentive, and industrious. As a youth, he was 
impetuous, generous, and high-spirited, proud, indignant 
at successful baseness, and eager for the truth. His, 
however, was a precocious nature, and in manhood he 
was already old. The disappointments of the world had 
soon set in, and he was withdrawn into silence and 
reserve. Still, within that cold and hard exterior, beat 
one of the warmest and softest of hearts. We have the 
evidence for this in his early friendships, in his filial 
and brotherly affection, and in his love for children. 
The first look of Schwegler gave what was harsh in 
him ; thickset, and above the middle height, there 
was a gloomy expression over his eyes ; he was strongly 
jawed also, and his mouth was severely closed. The 
yellowish hue of the smooth-shaven face contributed to 
the same effect. Otherwise, however, Schwegler's fea- 
tures were good. There were blue eyes and a fair- 
arched forehead under his light-brown locks. His nose 
was fine and regular ; his mouth had eloquence on its 
curves, and his chin was classically rounded. When 
the ice was thawed, one saw in him good-nature, — one 
saw in him humour. Beneath all the apparent pride and 
bitterness lay love and the necessity for love, the longing 
for sympathy, for disclosure. In life he was long un- 
fortunate, and he died so young. On the morning of 
the 5th of January 1857, he had lectured from eight to 
nine as usual ; half-an-hour later he was found insensible 
on the floor of his study, and next day he died. On the 
9th, the empty hull was laid in the ground. How fast 
we flit ! 



HANDBOOK OF THE HISTOEY 
OF PHILOSOPHY. 



HANDBOOK OF THE HISTOEY 
OF PHILOSOPHY. 



I. — General Idea of the History of Philosophy. 

PHILOSOPHY is reflection, the thinking consideration 
of things. This definition exhausts not the idea of 
philosophy, however. Man thinks in his practical activi- 
ties as well, where he calculates the means to the attain- 
ment of ends ; and all the other sciences — those even 
which belong not to philosophy in the stricter sense — 
are of the nature of thought. By what, then, does phi- 
losophy distinguish itself from these sciences ? By what 
does it distinguish itself, for example, from the science of 
astronomy, or from that of medicine, or of jurisprudence ? 
Not, certainly, by the difference of its matter. Its mat- 
ter is quite the same as that of the various empirical 
sciences. Plan and order of the universe, structure and 
function of the human body, property, law, politics, — all 
these belong to philosophy quite as much as to their 
respective special sciences. What is given in experience 
— actual fact — that, their material, is the material of 
j)hilosophy also. It is not, then, by its matter that phi- 
losophy distinguishes itself from the empirical sciences, 
but by its form, by its method,— so to speak by its mode 
of knowing. The various empirical sciences take their 
matter directly from experience ; they find it ready to 
hand ; and as they find it, they accept it. Philosophy, 
on the contrary, accepts not what is given in experience 
as it is given, but follows it up into its ultimate grounds, 
regarding each particular fact only in relation to a final 
principle, and as a determinate link in the system of 
knowledge. But just so it strips from such particular 
fact — which to our senses seems but a something given — 

A 



2 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

this its character of independency, individualness, and 
contingency. In the sea of empirical particulars, in the 
confused infinitude of the contingent, it establishes the 
universal, the necessary, the all-pervading law. In 
short, philosophy considers the entire empirical finite in 
the form of an intelligently articulated system. 

From this it follows that philosophy (as the thought 
totality of the empirical finite) stands to the empirical 
sciences in a relation of reciprocity, alternately condition- 
ing, and conditioned by them. It is as idle, therefore, 
to expect at any time the completion of philosophy, as 
the completion of empirical science. Philosophy exists 
rather in the form of a series of various historical philo- 
sophies, which, exhibiting thought in its various stages 
of development, present themselves hand in hand with 
the general scientific, social, and political progress. It is 
the subject-matter, the succession, and the internal con- 
nexion of these philosophies which it is the business of 
the history of philosophy to discuss. 

The relation in which the various systems stand to one 
another is thus already indicated. As man's historical 
life in general, even considered from the point of view of 
a calculation of probabilities, is made coherent by an idea 
of intellectual progress, and exhibits, if with interrup- 
tions, still a sufficiently continuous series of successive 
stages ; so the various historical systems (each being but 
the philosophical expression of the entire life of its time), 
constitute together but a single organic movement, a 
rational, inwardly-articulated whole, a series of evolu- 
tions, founded in the tendency of mind to raise its natu- 
ral more and more into conscious being, into knowledge, 
and to recognise the entire spiritual and natural universe 
more and more as its life and outward existence, as its 
actuality and reality, as the mirror of itself. 

Hegel was the first to enunciate these views, and to 
regard the history of philosophy in the unity of a single 
process ; but the fundamental idea, though true in prin- 
ciple, has been perhaps overstrained by him, and in a 
manner that threatens to destroy, as well the freedom of 
the human will, as the notion of contingency, or of a cer- 
tain existent unreason. Hegel holds the succession of 
the systems in history to be the same as that of the cate- 
gories in logic. Let us but free, he says, the fundamental 
thoughts of the various systems from all that attaches to 
their mere externality of form or particularity of applica- 



GENERAL IDEA. 3 

tion, and we obtain the various steps of the logical no- 
tion (being, becoming, particular being, individual being, 
quantity, etc.) ; while, conversely, if we but take the logi- 
cal progress by itself, we have in it the essential process 
of the results of history. 

But this conception can neither be justified in prin- 
ciple nor established by history. It fails in principle ; 
for history is a combination of liberty and necessity, and 
exhibits, therefore, only on the whole, any connexion of 
reason, while in its particulars, again, it presents but a 
play of endless contingency. It is thus, too, that nature, 
as a whole, displays rationality and system, but mocks 
all attempts at a priori schemata in detail. Further, in 
history it is individuals who have the initiative, free sub- 
jectivities, — what consequently, therefore, is directly 
incommensurable. For, reduce as we may the indi- 
vidual under the influence of the universal, in the form 
of his time, his circumstances, his nationality, etc., — to 
the value of a mere cipher, no free-will can be reduced. 
History, generally, is no school-sum to be exactly cast up ; 
there must be no talk, therefore, of any a priori construc- 
tion in the history of philosophy either. The facts of 
experience will not adapt themselves as mere examples 
to any ready-made logical schema. If at all to stand a 
critical investigation, what is given in experience must 
be taken as given, as handed to us ; and then the rational 
connexion of this that is so given must be referred to 
analysis. The speculative idea can be expected at best 
— and only for the scientific arrangement of the given 
material — to afford but a regulative. 

Another point of view which contradicts Hegel's con- 
ception is this : the historical development is almost 
always different from the logical. Historically, for ex- 
ample, the origin of the state was the desire of protec- 
tion from violence and fraud ; while logically, on the 
other hand, we are to find it, not in natural anarchy, but 
in the idea of justice. So it is here also : whilst the logi- 
cal progress is an ascent from the abstract to the con- 
crete, that of the history of philosophy is almost always 
a descent from the concrete to the abstract, from sense 
to thought, — a freeing of the abstract inner from the 
concrete outer of the general forms of civilisation, and of 
the traditional religious and social conditions in which 
he who would philosophize finds himself placed. The 
system of philosophy proceeds synthetically ; it3 history 



4 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

— the history of thought — analytically. With greater 
justice we may maintain the exact contrary of the 
Hegelian thesis, and assert that what is first in itself is 
precisely last for us. We find the Ionic philosophy, for 
example, beginning, not with being as an abstract 
notion, but with what is most sensuous and concrete, 
with the material notion of water, air, etc. Even the 
being of the Eleatics, and the becoming of Heraclitus, are 
not pure forms of thought, but impure notions, materially 
coloured conceptions. On the whole, the demand is 
futile, to refer each philosophy, according as it historic- 
ally appears, to a logical category as its central principle, 
and simply for this reason, that the majority of these 
philosophies have for object the idea, not in its abstrac- 
tion, but in its realization in nature and man, and for 
the most part, consequently* rest not on logical but 
on physical, psychological, and ethical questions. Hegel 
ought not, therefore, to have limited the comparison of 
the historical, with the systematic evolution to logic, but 
to have extended it to the whole system of philoso- 
phical science. The Eleatics, Heraclitus, the Atomists — 
and so far, certainly, the Hegelian logic corresponds to 
the Hegelian history of philosophy — display such logical 
category on their front; but then, Anaxagoras, the 
Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle ? Should we force, 
nevertheless, on these philosophies a central principle, 
and reduce, for example, that of Anaxagoras to the notion 
of design, that of the Sophists to the notion of show 
(Schein), and that of Socrates to the notion of the good, 
which in part is impossible without violence, there arises 
the new difficulty that then the historical order of these 
categories no longer corresponds to that which they pos- 
sess in logic. In point of fact, indeed, Hegel attempts 
not any complete realization of his main idea, but even 
on the threshold of Greek philosophy has already aban- 
doned it. Being, becoming, individual being, — the 
Eleatics, Heraclitus, the Atomists, — thus far the parallel, 
as said, extends, but not farther. Not only there follows 
now Anaxagoras with the notion of a designing mind, 
but even from the first the two series agree not. Hegel 
would have been more consistent, had he entirely re- 
jected the Ionic philosophy (for matter is no logical cate- 
gory), and had he assigned to Pythagoras a place— seeing 
that the categories of quantity follow those of quality — 
after the Eleatics and the Atomists. In short, he would 



DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 5 

have been more consistent logically, had he put chrono- 
logy entirely to the rout. Resigning this pretension, 
then, we must content ourselves if, in reproducing to 
thought the course which reflection has taken as a whole, 
there exhibit itself, on the main historical stations, a 
rational progress, and if the historian of philosophy, sur- 
veying the serial development, find really in it a philoso- 
phical acquisition, the acquisition of a new idea ; but we 
shall be cautious of applying to each transition and the 
whole detail the postulate of immanent law and logical 
nexus. History marches often in serpentine lines, often 
apparently in retreat. Philosophy, especially, has not 
unfrequently resigned some wide and fruitful territory, 
in order to turn back on some narrow strip of land, 
if only all the more to turn this latter to account. 
Sometimes thousands of years have expended themselves 
in vain attempts, and brought to light only a negative 
result. Sometimes a profusion of philosophical ideas is 
compressed into the space of a single generation. Here 
reign no unalterable, regularly recurrent laws of nature ; 
history, as the domain of free-will, will only in the last 
of days reveal itself as a work of reason. 



IL — Division of the Subject. 

ON the limits and division of the subject a few words 
may suffice. Where and when does philosophy 
begin? After what has been said, manifestly there 
where an ultimate principle, an ultimate ground of exist- 
ence, is first philosophically sought. Consequently with 
the philosophy of the Greeks. The Oriental (Chinese and 
Indian) so-called philosophy (rather theology or mytho- 
logy)* an( i the mythical cosmogonies of Greece itself at 
first, fall thus outside of our (more limited) undertaking. 
With us, as with Aristotle, the history of philosophy 
begins with Thales. For similar reasons we exclude also 
Scholasticism, or the philosophy of the Christian middle 
ages ; which belongs (being not so much philosophy as 
rather a reflecting or a philosophizing within the presup- 
positions of a positive religion, and therefore essentially 
theology) to the historical science of the Christian dogmas. 
What remains separates naturally into two parts : 
ancient (Grseco-Roman) and modern philosophy. The 
inner relations of both epochs will (a preliminary com- 



6 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

parative characterization being impossible without giving 
rise to repetitions) be noticed later, on occasion of the 
transition from the one to the other. 

The first epoch separates again into three periods : 
1. The Pre-Socratic philosophy (Thales to the Sophists 
inclusive) ; 2. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle ; 3. The Post- 
Aristotelian philosophy (to Neo-Platonism inclusive). 



III. — A Preliminary View of Pre-Socratic Philosophy. 

THE general tendency of Pre-Socratic philosophy is 
this, to find a principle of the explanation of nature. 
Nature it was — that which is most immediately pre- 
sent to us, that which lies nearest the eye, that which 
is palpablest — that first attracted the spirit of inquiry. 
Under its changeful forms, its multiplex phenomena, 
there mast lie, it was thought, a first and permanent 
fundamental principle. What is this principle ? What, 
it was asked, is the primitive ground of things ? Or, more 
precisely, what natural element is the basal element? 
An answer to this question constituted the problem of 
the earlier Ionic natural philosophers or Hylicists. One 
suggested water, another air, and a third a chaotic prim- 
eval matter, 

2. A higher solution of the problem was attempted by 
the Pythagoreans. Not matter in its sensuous concre- 
tion, but matter in its formal relations and dimensions, 
appeared to them to contain the explanatory ground of 
existence. As their principle, accordingly, they adopted 
numbers, the signs of relation. * Number is the essence 
of all things,' %J»a*was their thesis. Number is a middle 
term between pure thought and the immediate things of 
sense. Number and proportion, indeed, have to do with 
matter only so far as it is extended and divided in time 
and space ; but still without matter, without something 
to be seen, there is no counting, no measuring. This 
advance beyond, or elevation over, matter, which is yet 
at the same time a cleaving to matter, constitutes the 
nature and the position of the Pythagorean principle. 

3. Absolutely transcending the given and factual, en- 
tirely abstracting from everything material, the Meatics 
enunciated as principle this very abstraction, the nega- 
tion of any material dividedness in space and time, that 
is, pure being. Instead of the sensuous principle of the 



PEE-SOCBA TIG PHILOSOPHY. 7 

Tonics, or of the quantitative principle of the Pytha- 
goreans, they proposed, consequently, an intelligible prin- 
ciple. 

4. And thus there was completed the first or analytic 
period of Greek philosophical development, in order to 
give place to the second or synthetic period. The 
Eleatics had sacrificed to their principle of pure being 
this mundane existence with all its separate existences. 
But denial of nature and the world could not possibly be 
carried out. The reality of both pressed, against their 
wills, in on them, and they had themselves, though only 
hypothetically and under protest, been necessitated to 
speak of them. But from their abstract being they had 
no bridge, no longer any return to the concrete being of 
sense. Their principle was to have been an explanatory 
ground of existence, of the vicissitude of existence, and 
it was none. The problem, to find a principle that 
should explain the becoming, the vicissitude of existence, 
was left but the more urgent. Heraclitus, then, ap- 
peared now with his solution, and asserted for absolute 
principle the unity of being and non-being, — becoming. 
According to him, it belonged to the very nature of 
things that they should be in incessant change, in infi- 
nite flux. 'All fleets.' We have here, at the same 
time, in place of a primitive matter, as with the Ionics, 
the idea of a primitive living force, the first attempt to 
explain existence and the movement of existence by a 
principle that had been analytically acquired. After 
Heraclitus the question of the cause of becoming re- 
mained the chief interest and the motive of philosophical 
progress. 

5. Becoming is unity of being and non-being. Into 
these two moments the Heraclitic principle was by the 
Atomists consciously sundered. Heraclitus, namely, had 
without doubt enunciated the principle of becoming, 
but only as fact of experience ; he had only named, 
but not explained, the law of becoming : the point now 
was to demonstrate the necessity of that universal law. 
Why is the all in constant flux, in eternal movement ? 
It was evidently necessary to advance from the indefinite 
unity of matter and motive force to a conscious and de- 
finite distinction, to the mechanical separation of both. 
Thus it was that to Empedocles matter became the 
principle of being, fixed and permanent being, while force 
became the principle of movement. We have here a 



8 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

combination of Heraclitus and Parmenides. But with 
Einpedocles the moving forces were as yet but mythical 
powers, love and hate ; while, with the Atomists again, 
they became a pure un-understood and unintelligible ne- 
cessity of nature. And so, therefore, by the method of a 
mechanical explanation of nature, becoming was rather 
periphrased than explained. 

6. Despairing of any mere materialistic explanation of 
becoming, or the mundane process, Anaxagoras placed by 
the side of matter a world-forming intelligence ; he con- 
ceived mind as the ultimate causality of the world and of 
the order and design that appeared in it. A great prin- 
ciple was thus won for philosophy, — an ideal principle. 
But Anaxagoras failed to give his principle any complete 
realization. Instead of an intellectual conception of the 
universe, instead of an ideal derivation of existence, he is 
found to offer again, at last, only mechanical theories ; 
his ' world-forming reason ' amounts really only to the 
first impact, to the motive force ; it is but a deus ex ma- 
china. Despite his surmise, then, of a higher principle, 
Anaxagoras, like his predecessors, is still a physicist. 
Mind did not manifest itself to him as a veritably supra- 
natural power, as the free organizing soul of the universe. 

7. Further progress now is characterized thus. The 
distinction between mind and nature becomes definitely 
understood; and the former, as contrasted with the 
latter, is recognised as the relatively higher. This was 
the work of the Sophists. Their action was to entangle 
in contradictions such thought as had not yet emancipated 
itself from the objects of sense, from the datum of tradi- 
tion, or from the datum of authority. In the first, and 
indeed somewhat boyish, consciousness of the superiority 
of subjective thought to the objectivity (in sense, tradi- 
tion, and authority) by which it had been hitherto over- 
mastered, they flung both elements wildly together. In 
other words, the Sophists introduced, in the form of a 
general religious and political Aufklarung (illumination), 
the principle of subjectivity, though at first only nega- 
tively, or as destroyer of all that was established in the 
opinions of existing society. And this continued till 
Socrates opposed to this principle of empirical subjectivity 
that of absolute subjectivity, or intelligence in the form 
of a free moral will, and asserted, as against the world of 
sense, thought to be the positively higher principle, and 
the truth of all reality. With the Sophists, as character- 



EARLIER IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. 9 

istic of the dissolution of the earliest philosophy, our 
first period is closed. 



IV. — The Earlier Ionic Philosophers. 

T HALES. — At the head of the Ionic physicists, and at 
the head, therefore, of philosophy in general, the an- 
cients, with tolerable unanimity, place Thales of Miletus 
(640-550, B.C.), a contemporary of Croesus and Solon. The 
proposition to which he owes his place in the history of 
philosophy is this : ' The principle {the first, the primitive 
ground) of all things is water; all comes from water, 
and to water all returns.' This assumption, however, in 
regard to the original of things, is no advance in itself 
beyond the position of the earlier mythical cosmogonies. 
Aristotle, in noticing Thales, speaks of several ancient 
' theologians ' (meaning, no doubt, Homer and Hesiod), 
who had ascribed to Oceanus and Tethys the origin of all 
things. The attempt, then, to establish his principle in 
freedom from the mythic element, and so to introduce 
scientific procedure, — it is this, and not the principle 
itself, which procures for Thales the character of initiator 
of philosophy. He is the first that trod the ground of 
the interpretation of nature on principles of the under- 
standing. How he made good his proposition cannot now 
be exactly determined. He was probably led to his hypo- 
thesis, however, by the observation that moisture con- 
stituted the germ and nourishment of things, that it 
developed heat, that it was in general the formative, 
life-giving, and life-possessing element. Then, from the 
condensation and rarefaction of his primitive element, he 
derived further, as it seems, the changes of things. The 
process itself he has certainly not determined with any 
greater precision. 

Such, then, is the philosophical import of Thales. A 
speculative philosopher in the more modern manner he 
assuredly was not, and philosophical literature being yet 
alien to the time, he does not appear, for preservation of 
his opinions, to have resorted to writing. In consequence 
of his reputation for ethico-political wisdom, he is included 
among the seven sages, and the characteristics which 
the ancients relate of him certainly testify specially to 
his practical understanding. It is reported of him, for 
instance, that he was the first to calculate an eclipse of 



10 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the sun, that, in order to enable Croesus to cross the 
Halys, he effected a diversion of that river, and that he 
performed other similar feats. In regard to the state- 
ments of later authorities, that he had asserted the unity 
of the world, advanced the idea of a world-soul or of a 
world-forming spirit, taught the immortality of the soul, 
etc., these are to be regarded as beyond doubt but un- 
historical transpositions of later ideas to a much less de- 
veloped stand-point. 

2. Anaximander. — Anaximander of Miletus, who is 
described by the ancients sometimes as a disciple and 
sometimes as a contemporary of Thales, but who, under 
every supposition, was somewhere about a generation 
younger than he, endeavoured still further to develop 
the principle of the latter. He defined his primitive 
matter, in connexion with which he is supposed to be the 
first who used the term principle (apx^), as the 'eternal, 
infinite, indefinite ground, from which, in order of time, 
all arises, and into which all returns,' as that which 
comprehends and rules all the spheres of the universe, 
but which, underlying every individual form of the finite 
and mutable, is itself infinite and indefinite. How we 
are to think this principle of Anaximander is a question 
in dispute. It was certainly not one of the four usual 
elements. As certainly, again, it was not something 
immaterial, but was probably conceived by Anaximander 
as primal matter not yet sundered into its individual 
elements, the prius in time, the chemical indifference of 
our modern elementary contraries. In this respect, such 
primitive matter is doubtless * unlimited ' and ' indefi- 
nite,' or neither qualitatively defined nor quantitatively 
limited. It is by no means on that account, however, to 
be regarded as a pure dynamical principle, as, for in- 
stance, the friendship and hatred of Empedocles, but only 
as a more philosophical expression for the thought which 
the ancients endeavoured to represent by the supposition 
of chaos. Accordingly, Anaximander conceives the 
original contraries of heat and cold (as bases of the ele- 
ments and of life) to separate from his primitive matter 
by virtue of an eternal movement immanent in it ; and 
in this way it is clearly proved that his primitive matter 
is only the undeveloped, undivided potential being of 
these elemental contraries. 

3. Anaximenes. — Anaximenes, a disciple or a contem- 
porary of Anaximander, returned in some degree, to the 



THE P YTHA 00 BEANS. 1 1 

fundamental views of Thales, in so far as he conceived 
the principle of the universe to be the * unlimited, all- 
embracing, ever-moving air,' from which by rarefaction 
(tire) and condensation (water, earth, stone), everything 
else is formed. The fact of the air surrounding the 
whole world, and of the breath being the condition of 
life, seems to have led him to this hypothesis. 

4. Retrospect. — The three earliest Ionic philosophers 
have thus, and to this their entire philosophy reduces it- 
self, (a) sought the universal primitive matter of existence 
in general ; (b) found this in a material substrate ; and 
(c) given some intimations in regard to the derivation 
from this primitive matter of the fundamental forms of 
nature. 

V. — The Pythagoreans. 

THE Position of this School.— The Ionic philosophy, 
as we have seen, developed a tendency to abstract 
from the immediately given, individual quality of matter. 
We have the same abstraction, but on a higher stage, 
when the sensuous concretion of matter in general is 
looked away from ; when attention is turned no longer 
to the qualitative character of matter, as water, air, 
etc., but to its quantitative character, its quantitative 
measure and relations ; when reflection is directed, not 
to the material, but to the form and order of things as 
they exist in space. But the specific nature of quantity 
is wholly expressed in numbers, or, as we may also term 
it, in the cipher. Now this is the principle and the 
position of the Pythagoreans. 

2. Historical Features. — The numerical system in 
question is referred to Pythagoras of Samos, who is said 
to have flourished between the years 540 and 500 B.C. 
The later years of his life, however, were passed at 
Crotona, in Grsecia Magna ; where, with a view to the 
social and political regeneration of the cities of Lower 
Italy, disturbed at that time by the strifes of parties, he 
founded a society, the members of which bound them- 
selves to purity and piety of life, to the closest reciprocal 
friendship, and to co-operation in maintaining the mora- 
lity and discipline, the order and harmony, of the whole 
community. What is handed down to us concerning 
the life of Pythagoras, his travels, his political influence 
in Southern Italy, etc., is so thoroughly interwoven with 



12 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

traditions, legends, and palpable fables, that on no point 
are we certain of having historical ground beneath us. 
Nor is this unintelligible when we consider, not only the 
partiality of the Pythagoreans themselves for the myste- 
rious and the esoteric, but especially the fact that his 
Neo-Platonic biographers, Porphyry and Iamblichus, have 
written his life in the manner of an historico -philosophi- 
cal romance. The same uncertainty obtains as regards 
his doctrine, and specially his share in the number- 
theory ; which is nowhere attributed by Aristotle to him 
specially, but only to the Pythagoreans in general ; from 
which we may suppose that it had received its comple- 
tion only within the entire society. The accounts with 
reference to his school acquire some degree of security 
only towards the time of Socrates, or a hundred years 
after his own death. To the few points of light in 
this connexion belong the Pythagoreans, Philolaus and 
Archytas, the latter a contemporary of Plato, and 
the former mentioned in the Phcedo. We possess the 
doctrine of the school also only in the shape into 
which it has been brought by these, and by Eurytus ; 
for none of their predecessors has left anything in writ- 
ing. 

3. The Pythagorean Principle. — The fundamental 
thought of the Pythagoreans was that of proportion and 
harmony : this idea is to them, as well the principle of 
practical life, as the supreme law of the universe. 
Their cosmology regarded the world as a symmetrically 
arranged whole, that united in harmony within itself all 
the varieties and contrarieties of existence. This view 
especially announces itself in the doctrine that all the 
spheres of the universe (the earth among them), move 
in prescribed paths around a common focus, the central 
fire, from which light, heat, and life radiate into the 
whole world. This idea, that the world is, in definite 
forms and proportion, an harmoniously articulated whole, 
has for its metaphysical foundation and support the 
Pythagorean number-theory. It is through numbers 
that the quantitative relations of things, as extension, 
magnitude, figure (triangle, square, cube, etc.), distance, 
combination, etc., properly receive each its own indi- 
vidual quality. All forms and proportions of things are 
referred at last to number. So, then, it was concluded, 
as there exists nothing whatever without form and 
measure, number is necessarily the principle of things 



THE P YTHA GOREANS. 13 

themselves, as well as of the order which they exhibit in 
the world. The accounts of the ancients are not agreed 
as to whether number was considered by the Pythago- 
reans an actually material or a merely ideal principle, 
that is, a primitive form, according to which all had been 
ordered and disposed. Even the relative statements of 
Aristotle seem mutually contradictory. Sometimes he 
speaks in the one sense, and sometimes in the other. 
Later writers have supposed, therefore, that the theory 
had undergone several forms of development, and that, 
accordingly, there had been Pythagoreans of both 
opinions, now that numbers were material substances, 
and now that they were only the archetypes of things. 
We have a hint in Aristotle too, that indicates how we 
may unite the two opinions. Originally the Pythago- 
reans, without doubt, held number to be the stuff, the 
inherent essence and substance of things ; and so it is 
that, in this reference, Aristotle ranks them with the 
Hylicists or Ionic physicists, and roundly says of them : 
* They held things to be numbers ' (Meta. I. 5, 6). But, 
again, as these Hylicists identified not their HXtj, their 
materia — water, for example — directly with any particular 
individual of actual sense, but looked at it only as the 
materia prima, or prototype, of the several individual 
things, so numbers were capable of being regarded as 
similar prototypes, and Aristotle, in that reference, might 
justly say of the Pythagoreans : * They held numbers to 
be more adequate prototypes of existence than water, air, 
etc/ Should there still appear to remain, nevertheless, 
any uncertainty in the expressions of Aristotle in regard 
to the meaning of the Pythagorean number-theory, its 
source can only lie in this, that the Pythagoreans them- 
selves had not made the distinction between an ideal and 
a material principle, but had contented themselves with 
the general proposition that number was the principle of 
things, that all was number. 

4. The Principle in Operation. — From the nature 
of the principle, we readily expect that its application in 
explanation of the various real spheres will end in a mere 
empty, barren symbolism. In discriminating number, 
for example, into its two kinds of odd and even, as into 
its inherent antithesis of limited and unlimited, and then 
in applying these distinctions to astronomy, music, psy- 
chology, ethics, etc., there arose such combinations as 
these : One is the point, two the line, three the plane. 



14 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

four the solid, five the quality, etc., or the soul is a har- 
mony, and equally so virtue, etc. Not only philosophi- 
cal, but even historical interest disappears here ; and it is 
intelligible how unavoidably the ancients themselves have, 
in the case of such arbitrary combinations, furnished us 
with the most discrepant accounts. Thus we hear that 
justice was to the Pythagoreans now three, now four, 
now five, and now nine. Naturally, in the case of so 
loose and arbitrary a mode of philosophizing, a great 
diversity of individual views will arise earlier than in 
other schools; some preferring one interpretation of a 
given mathematical form, and some another. What 
alone has any truth or importance in this arithmetical 
mystic is the leading thought that law, order, and agree- 
ment obtain in the affairs of nature, and that these rela- 
tions are capable of being expressed in number and 
measure. But this truth the Pythagoreans have hidden 
away among the phantasies of a fanaticism at once un- 
bridled and cold. 

If we except the movements assigned to the earth and 
stars, there is but little of scientific merit in the physics 
of the Pythagoreans. Their ethics, too, are deficient. 
What has been transmitted to us in that respect is 
characteristic rather of the life and discipline of their 
peculiar society, than of their philosophy. The whole 
tendency of the Pythagoreans, in a practical aspect, was 
ascetic, and aimed only at a rigid castigation of the 
moral principle. Their conception of the body as a prison 
of the soul, which latter, for its part, belonged to loftier 
regions, their tenet of the transmigration of souls into 
the bodies of animals, from which only a pure and pious 
life delivered, their representations of the severe penalties 
of the other world, their prescript that man should regard 
himself as property of God, that he should obey God in 
all things, that he should strive after likeness with God, — 
ideas which Plato has considered and further developed, 
especially in the Phcedo, — are all capable of being alleged 
in proof. 

VI.— The Eleatics. 

RELATION" of the Eleatic Principle to the 
Pythagorean. — If the Pythagoreans made mate- 
rial substance, so far as it is quantitative, multiplex, 
and consistent of parts, the basis of their philosophy, 



THE ELEATICS. 15 

and abstracted consequently only from its definite ele- 
mentary quality, the Eleatics now went a step farther, 
and, drawing the last consequence of this abstracting 
process, took for principle a total abstraction from every 
finite particular, from all change, from all vicissitude of 
existence. If the Pythagoreans still held fast by the 
form of space and time, the negation of this, the nega- 
tion, that is, of all dividedness in space and successive- 
ness in time, has now become the fundamental thought 
of the Eleatics. ' Only being is, and non-being (becom- 
ing) is not at all.' This being is the pure characterless, 
changeless, general ground, not being that is contained 
in becoming, but being with exclusion of all becoming, 
being that is pure being and only to be comprehended in 
thought. 

Eleaticism is consequently monism, so far as it endea- 
vours to reduce the manifold of existence to a single 
ultimate principle ; but it falls into dualism so far as it 
can neither carry out the denial of the phenomenal world 
of finite existence, nor deduce this world from the pre- 
supposed general ground of pure being. The phenomenal 
world, though explained to be only inessential null show, 
still is ; there must be left to it (sensuous perception 
refusing to be got out of the way), the right of existence 
at least hypothetieally ; there must be procured for it, if 
even under protest and proviso, a genetic explanation. 
This contradiction of an unreconciled dualism between 
pure and phenomenal being is the point where the Eleatic 
philosophy discloses its own insufficiency ; though not 
seen at first in the beginning of the school, under Xeno- 
phanes. The principle, together with its consequences, 
developed itself only in course of time ; running through 
three successive periods, which distribute themselves to 
three successive generations. The foundation of the 
Eleatic school belongs to Xenophanes, its systematic 
development to Parmenides, its completion, and in part 
its resolution, to Zeno and Melissus (which latter we 
here omit). 

2. Xenophanes. — Xenophanes, a native of Colophon 
in Asia Minor, but who had emigrated to the Phocaean 
colony of Elea (in Lucania), a younger contemporary of 
Pythagoras, is the originator of the Eleatic tendency. 
He seems the first to have enunciated the proposition, ■ all 
is one,' without specifying further, however, whether 
this unity be intellectual or material. Directing his 



16 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

regards to the world as a whole, says Aristotle, he called 
God the one. The Eleatic * One and All' (tv ical irav) 
had still with him a theological, or a religious character. 
The idea of the unity of God, and the polemic against 
the anthropomorphism of the popular religion, this is his 
starting-point. He is indignant at the delusion that the 
gods were born, had human voices, shape, etc., and he 
inveighs against Homer and Hesiod for that they have 
imputed to the gods robbery, adultery, fraud, etc. God 
with him is all eye, understanding, ear; unmoved, un- 
divided, undisturbed ; ruling all through thought ; and 
like to men neither in form nor understanding. In this 
manner, mainly intent on diverting from God all terms 
and predicates of finitude, and establishing his unity and 
immutableness, he enunciated at the same time this his 
true nature as the highest philosophical principle without 
however negatively carrying it out, by polemically turn- 
ing it against finite being. 

3. Parmenides. — The special head of the Eleatic 
school is Parmenides of Elea, a disciple, or at all events 
an adherent, of Xenophanes. However little has been 
transmitted to us for certain of the circumstances of his 
life, yet all antiquity is unanimous in the expression of 
its veneration for the Eleatic sage, and in admiration of 
the depth of his intellect, and of the earnestness and 
sublimity of his character, and the phrase, ' a Parmeni- 
dean life ' became later, amongst the Greeks, pro- 
verbial. 

Parmenides, like Xenophanes before him, gave his 
philosophy to the world in the shape of an epic poem, 
of which some considerable fragments are still preserved 
to us. It is divided into two parts. In the first part 
Parmenides discusses the notion of being. Raising him- 
self far above the unreasoned conception of Xenophanes, 
he directly opposes this notion, pure simple being, to all 
that is multiplex and mutable, as to what is non-beent 
and consequently unthinkable ; and excludes from being 
not only all origination and decease, but also all elements 
of time and space, and all divisibility, diversity, and 
movement. This being he declares to be unbecome and 
imperishable, whole and sole, immutable and illimitable, 
indivisibly and timelessly present, perfectly and univer- 
sally self -identical ; and he appropriates to it, as singl© 
positive character (for previous characters had only been 
negative) — thought: * being and thought are' to him 



THE ELEA TICS. 17 

'one and the same.' In contrast to the deceptive and 
illusory ideas of multiplicity and change in the pheno- 
mena of sense, he designates the pure thought that is 
directed to this being as alone the true and infallible 
knowledge. Nor does he hesitate to regard as non-beent 
and as illusion what mortals consider truth, namely origin 
and decease, perishable existence, multiplicity and diver- 
sity, change of place, and alteration of quality. We 
must be on our guard, then, against taking the one of 
Parmenides for the collective unity of all that is. 

Thus far the first part of the Parmenidean poem. 
After the proposition, that only being is, has been deve- 
loped in its negative and positive relations, we naturally 
believe the system at its end. But there follows now a 
second part which occupies itself hypothetically with the 
explanation and physical derivation of the non-beent, 
that is, of the phenomenal world. Though firmly con- 
vinced that, in truth and reason, only the one is, Par- 
menides is unable to escape the recognition of a pheno- 
menal and mutable complex. He prefaces, therefore, — 
as, compelled by sensuous perception, he passes to the dis- 
cussion of the phenomenal world, — this second part, with 
the remark, that truth's discourse and thought are now 
ended, and henceforth it is only mortal opinion that is to 
be considered. Unfortunately this second part has come 
down to us very incomplete. This much may be gathered : 
he explains the phenomena of nature by the mixture of 
two immutable elements, designated by Aristotle as heat 
and cold, fire and earth. Of these Aristotle remarks 
further, he collocates the hot with the beent, the other 
with the non-beent. All things are made up of these 
antitheses : the more fire, so much the more being, life, 
consciousness ; the more cold and immobility, so much 
the more lifelessness. The principle of the unity of all 
being is only preserved in this way, that in man the 
sensitive and intellective substance, body and soul, are, 
according to Parmenides, one and the same. 

It need scarcely be remarked, that between the two 
parts of this philosophy, the doctrine of being and the 
doctrine of seeming, no scientific inward connexion has 
place. What in the first part Parmenides directly denies, 
and even declares incapable of being spoken, the non- 
beent, the multiplex and mutable, this he grants in the 
secoud part as at least existent in human conception. 
But it is clear that the non-beent could not exist even 



18 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

in conception, if it existed not altogether and through- 
out ; and that the attempt to explain a non-beent of 
conception completely contradicts any exclusive acknow- 
ledgment of the beent. This contradiction, the undemon- 
strated collocation of the beent and the non-beent, of the 
one and the many, was attempted to be surmounted by 
the disciple of Parmenides, Zeno, who sought, supported 
by the notion of being, dialectically to eliminate sensuous 
knowledge and the world consequently of the non-beent. 
4. Zeno. — The Eleatic Zeno, born about 500 B.C., a 
disciple of Parmenides, dialectically developed the doc- 
trine of his master, and carried out, the most rigorously of 
all, the abstraction of the Eleatic one as in contrast to 
the multiplicity and natural qualitative individuality of 
the finite. He justified the doctrine of the one, sole, 
simple, and immutable being by indirect method, through 
demonstration of the contradictions in which the ordinary 
beliefs of the phenomenal world become entangled. If 
Parmenides maintained that only the one is, Zeno, for 
his part, polemically showed that there is possible 
neither (1.) multiplicity, nor (2.) movement, because these 
notioDS lead to contradictory consequences. (1.) The 
many is an aggregate of units, of which it is made up ; 
but an actual unit (a unit that is not again multiple) is 
necessarily indivisible ; but what is indivisible has no 
longer any magnitude (else, of course, it might be divid- 
ed) ; consequently the many cannot have any magni- 
tude, and must be infinitely little. Would we evade 
this conclusion (on the ground that what has no magni- 
tude is the same as nothing) then we must grant the 
manies (the units of the many) to be self-dependent 
quanta. But a self-dependent quantum is only what has 
itself magnitude, and is separated from other quanta by 
something again that has also magnitude (as otherwise 
it would coalesce with them). These separating quanta 
again must (for the same reason) be separated, from those 
which they separate, by yet others, and so on ; all, * 
therefore, is separated from all by infinitely numerous 
quanta ; all limited, definite magnitude disappears, there 
is nothing in existence but infinite magnitude. Further, 
if there is a many (a multiple of parts) it must be in 
respect of number, limited ; for it is just as much as it 
is, no more, and no less. But the many must be equally 
unlimited in respect of number ; for between that which 
is (any one part viewed as independent quantum)^ there 



HEEACLITUS. 19 

is always, again, a third (a tertium quid, meaning the 
necessarily inferred separating quantum), and so on ad 
infinitum, (2.) A moving body must before reaching 
term, accomplish one half of the distance to it, but of 
this half again it must previously accomplish the half, 
and so on ; in short it must pass through infinite spaces, 
which is impossible ; consequently there is no getting 
from one spot to another, no movement ; motion can 
never get a start, for every space-part required to be de- 
scribed, sunders again into infinite space-parts. Further, 
at rest means to be in one and the same place. If we 
divide the time, then, during which an arrow flies into 
moments (each a now), then the arrow in each of these 
moments (that is, now), is only in one place ; therefore, 
it is always at rest, and the motion is merely apparent. 
On account of these arguments, which first directed 
attention — and at least in part justly — to certain diffi- 
culties and antinomies involved in the infinite divisibi- 
lity of matter, space, and time, Zeno is named by Aris- 
totle the originator of dialectic. By Zeno, Plato too 
has been essentially influenced. 

Zeno"s philosophy, however, as it is the completion 
of the Eleatic principle, so also is it the beginning of its 
end. Zeno took up the antithesis of being and non- 
being so abstractly, and overstrained it so, that the 
inner contradiction of the principle became much more 
glaringly prominent with him than even with Parmenides. 
For the more consequent he is in the denial of an exist- 
ence of sense, so much the more striking must the con- 
tradiction seem, on one side to apply his whole philoso- 
phic faculty to the refutation of sensuous belief, and on 
the other side to oppose to it a doctrine which destroys 
the possibility of the false existence itself. 



VJJ . — He raid i t us. 

RELATION OF THE HZRACLITIC TO THE ELEATIC 
Principle. — Pure being and phenomenal being, 
the one and the many, fall, in the Eleatic principle, 
apart from each other : the attempted monism results 
in an ill-concealed dualism. Heraclitus reconciles thia 
contradiction by enunciating as the truth of being and 
non-being, of the one and the many, the at once of both, 
— becoming. If the Eleatics persist in the dile mm a, the 



20 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

world is either beent or non-beent, Heraclitus answers, 
It is neither of them, because it is both of them. 

2. Historical Characteristics. — Heraclitus of Ephe- 
sus, by his successors surnamed the Dark, flourished 
about the year 460 B.C., or later than Xenophanes, and 
nearly contemporaneously with Parmenides. He was 
the deepest of the pre-Socratic philosophers. His philo- 
sophical thoughts are contained in a work, ' On Nature,' 
of which a few fragments still remain. This work, made 
difficult by the abrupt transitions, the intensely pregnant 
expression, and the philosophical originality of Heracli- 
tus himself, perhaps also by the antiquatedness of the 
earliest prose, became, for its unintelligibleness, very 
soon proverbial. Socrates said of it, ' that what he 
understood was excellent, what not he believed to be 
equally so ; but that the book required a tough swim- 
mer. ' Later writers, particularly Stoics, have commen- 
tated it. 

3. The Principle op Becoming. — As principle of 
Heraclitus, the idea is unanimously assigned by the an- 
cients, that the totality of things is in eternal flux, in 
uninterrupted motion and mutation, and that their per- 
manence is only illusion. c Into the same river,' a saying 
of his ran, l we go down, and we do not go down. For, 
into the same river no man can enter twice ; ever it dis- 
perses itself and collects itself again, or rather, at once it 
flows-in and flows-out.' Nothing, he said, remains the 
same, all comes and goes, resolves itself and passes into 
other forms ; out of all comes all, from life death, from 
the dead, life ; there is everywhere and eternally only 
this one process of the alternation of birth and decay. 
It is maintained, not without reason, then, that Heraclitus 
banished peace and permanence out of the world of 
things, and when he accuses ears and eyes of deception, 
he doubtless means in a like reference, that they delude 
men with a show of permanence where there is only 
uninterrupted change. 

It is in further development of the principle that 
Heraclitus intimates that all becoming is to be conceived 
as the result of opposing adversatives, as the harmonious 
conjunction of hostile principles. If what is did not con- 
tinually sunder into contrarieties, which are distinguished 
from each other, which oppose each other, partly driving 
off and supplanting one another, partly attracting and 
supplementing, and flowing over into one another, all — 



HERACLITUS. 21 

all actuality and life — would cease and decease. Hence 
the two familiar dicta — ' Strife is the father of things,' 
and ' The one, sundering from itself, coalesces with itself, 
like the harmony of the bow and the lyre.' That is, 
there is unity in the world only so far as the life of the 
world parts into antitheses, in the conjunction and con- 
ciliation of which, indeed, this very unity consists. 
Unity presupposes duality, harmony discord, attraction 
repulsion, and only by the one is the other realized. 
'Join together,' runs another of his dicta, 'whole and 
unwhole, congruous and incongruous, accordant and dis- 
cordant, then comes from all one, from one all.' 

4. Fihe. — In what relation to this principle of becom- 
ing stands now the principle of fire, which is likewise 
ascribed to Heraclitus ? Heraclitus, says Aristotle, made 
fire the principle, as Thales water, and Anaximenes air. 
But obviously we must not understand this statement as 
if Heraclitus, like the Hylicists, had made fire the pri- 
mitive matter or element. He who ascribes reality only 
to becoming itself, cannot possibly collocate with this 
becoming an additional elementary matter as funda- 
mental substance. When, therefore, Heraclitus names 
the world an ever-living fire that, in due measure and 
degree, extinguishes itself and again kindles itself, when 
he says, all is exchanged for fire and fire for all, as things 
for gold and gold for things, he can only understand by 
this that fire, this restless, all-consuming, all-transmut- 
ing, and equally (in heat) all -vivifying element, represents 
the constant force of this eternal alteration and transfor- 
mation, the notion of life, in the most vivid and energetic 
manner. We might name fire in the Heraclitic sense as 
a symbol or manifestation of the becoming, if it were not 
also with him at the same time substrate of the move- 
ment, that is to say, the means of which the power of 
motion, that is precedent to all matter, avails itself for 
the production of the living process of things. Heracli- 
tus then explains the multiplicity of things by the arrest- 
ment and partial extinction of this fire, in consequence 
of which it condenses itself into material elements, first 
air, then water, then earth. But this fire acquires 
equally again the preponderance over these obstructions, 
and rekindles itself afresh. These two processes of extinc- 
tion and ignition in this fire-power, alternate, according 
to Heraclitus, in perpetual rotation with each other ; and 
he taught, therefore, that in stated periods the world 



22 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

resolves itself into the primal fire, in order to re-create 
itself out of it again. Moreover, also, fire is to him, 
even in individual things, the principle of movement, of 
physical as of spiritual vitality ; the soul itself is a fiery 
vapour; its power and perfection depend on its being 
pure from all grosser and duller elements. The practical 
philosophy of Heraclitus requires that we should not 
follow the deceitful delusions of sense which fetter us to 
the changing and the perishable, but reason ; it teaches 
us to know the true, the abiding in the mutable, and 
especially leads us tranquilly to acquiesce in the neces- 
sary order of the universe, and to perceive, even in that 
which seems to us evil, an element that co-operates to 
the harmony of the whole. 

5. Transition to the Atomists. — The Eleatic and the 
Heraclitic principles constitute the completest antithesis 
to each other. If Heraclitus resolves all permanent 
existence into an absolutely fluent becoming, Parmenides 
resolves all becoming into an absolutely permanent 
being, and even the senses, eye and ear, to which the 
former imputes the error of transmuting the fleeting be- 
coming into a settled being, are charged by the latter 
with the false opinion which drags immovable being into 
the process of becoming. We may say, accordingly, th at 
being and becoming are the equally justified antitheses 
which demand for themselves mutual equalization and 
conciliation. Heraclitus conceives the phenomenal world 
as existent contradiction, and persists in this contradic- 
tion as ultimate. That which the Eleatics believed 
themselves obliged to deny, becoming, was not explained 
by being sii* ^ly maintained. The question ever recurs 
again, Why is all being a becoming ? Why is the one 
perpetually sundered into the many ? The answer to this 
question, that is to say, the explanation of the becoming 
from the preconceived principle of the being, is the posi- 
tion and the problem of the philosophy of Empedocles 
and of the Atomists. 



VIII. — Empedocles. 

GENERAL Survey. — Empedocles of Agrigentum, ex- 
tolled by antiquity as statesman and orator, as 
physicist, physician, and poet, even as prophet and worker 
of miracles, flourished about the year 440 B.C., was conse- 



EMPEDOCLES. 23 

quently later than Parmenides and Heraclitus, and wrote 
a poem on nature, which is preserved to us in pretty 
large fragments. His philosophical system may be 
briefly characterized as an attempt at a combination be- 
tween Eleatic being and Heraclitic becoming. Proceed- 
ing from the Eleatic thought, that neither what had 
previously not been could become, nor what was perish, 
he assumed, as imperishable being, four eternal, self- 
subsistent, mutually inderivative, but divisible primal 
matters (our own four elements). But, at the same time, 
combining herewith the Heraclitic principle of process in 
nature, he conceives his four elements to be mingled and 
moulded by two moving forces, the uniting one of friend- 
ship, and the disuniting one of strife. At first the four 
elements existed together, absolutely one with each other, 
and immovable in the Sphairos, that is, in the pure and 
perfect globe-shaped divine primitive world, where 
friendship maintained them in unity, till gradually strife, 
penetrating from the periphery into the inner of the 
Sphairos, that is, attaining to a disintegrating power, 
broke up the unity, whereby the world of contrarieties 
in which we live began to form itself. 

2. The four Elements. — With his doctrine of the four 
elements, Empedocles unites himself, on the one hand, to 
the series of Ionic physicists, and on the other hand, he 
separates himself from these by his elementary four, as 
originator of which he is pointedly designated by the 
ancients. He distinguishes himself from the old Hyhcists 
more definitely in this way, that he attributes to his four 
' radical elements' an immutable being, by virtue of 
which they arise not out of each other, nor pass over into 
each other, and in general are capable not of any change 
in themselves, but only in their mutual composition. All 
that is called origination and decease, all mutation, rests 
therefore only on the mingling and unmingling of these 
eternal primitive elements ; all the inexhaustible multi- 
plicity of being on their various relations of intermixture. 
All becoming is thus now thought only as change of 
place. (Mechanical as opposed to dynamical explanation 
of nature.) 

3. The two Forces. — Whence becoming now, if in 
matter itself there lie no principle and no ground ex- 
planatory of change ? As Empedocles neither denied 
change, like the Eleatics, nor placed it, like Heraclitus, 
as an immanent principle in matter, there remained 



24 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

nothing for him but to set beside matter a moving force. 
But, again, the antithesis of one and many attaching to 
his predecessors (and which called for an explanation) 
laid him under an obligation also to attribute to this 
moving force two originally different directions, — on one 
side a separating or repulsive tendency, and on the other 
an attractive one. The sundering of the one into many 
and the conjoining of the many into one, alone pointed to 
an opposition of forces which already Heraclitus had 
recognised. If Parmenides, now, with his principle of 
unity, so to speak, had adopted love for principle, and if 
Heraclitus, with his principle of the many, had selected 
strife, Empedocles makes here also, as principle of his own 
philosophy, the combination of both. He has not, it 
is true, exactly determined for his two forces their spheres 
of action as in mutual relation. Although, in propriety, 
friendship is the attractive, strife the repulsive force, 
nevertheless we find Empedocles at another time treat- 
ing strife as the tendency of union and creation, and love 
as that of separation. And, in effect, the truth is that, 
in such a movement as becoming, any thorough disunion 
of a separating and a uniting force, is an impossible abs- 
traction. 

4. Relation of the Philosophy of Empedocles to 
those of the Eleatics and of Heraclitcs. — In placing 
by the side of matter, as element of being, a moving 
force, as element of becoming, the philosophy of Empe- 
docles is evidently a conciliation, or more properly a 
collocation, of the Eleatic and the Heraclitic principles. 
The systems of these two classes of predecessors he has 
woven into his own philosophy in equal shares. With 
the Eleatics, he denies origination and decease, that is, 
transition of what is, into what is not, and of what is not, 
into what is ; with Heraclitus he has an equal interest in 
the explanation of change. From the former source he 
takes the permanent immutable being of his primitive 
matters ; from the latter, the principle of a moving force. 
"With the Eleatics, finally, he places true being in origi- 
nal undistinguished unity as Sphairos ; with Heraclitus, 
again, he conceives the world we possess as the continual 
product of conflicting forces. It is with justice, then, 
that he has been described as an eclectic, who united, 
but not quite consequently, the fundamental ideas of his 
two immediate predecessors. 



THE ATOMISTS. 25 



IX. — The Atomists. 



THE Founders. — Like Empedocles, the Atomists, 
Leucippus and Democritus, endeavoured to effect a 
combination of the Eleatic and Heraclitic principles, but 
in another way. Democritus, the younger and better 
known of the two, born of wealthy parents, in the Ionian 
colony of Abdera, about 460 B.C., travelled extensively 
(he was the greatest polymath before Aristotle), and gave 
to the world the riches of his gathered knowledge in a 
series of writings, of which, however, only a very few 
fragments have come down to us. For splendour and 
music of eloquence Cicero compares Democritus to Plato. 
He lived to a great age. 

2. The Atoms. — Instead of assuming, like Empedocles, 
an aggregate of qualitatively determinate and distinct 
primitive matters as original source, the Atomists derived 
all phenomenal specific quality from a primeval infinitude 
of original constituents, which, alike in quality, were un- 
like in quantity. Their atoms are immutable material 
particles, extended but indivisible, and differing from 
each other only in size, shape, and weight. As existent, 
but without quality, they are absolutely incapable of any 
metamorphosis or qualitative alteration, so that, as with 
Empedocles, all becoming is but local alteration ; plurality 
in the phenomenal world is only to be explained by the 
various figures, order, and positions of the atoms, which 
present themselves, too, united in various complexions. 

3. The Plenum and the Vacuum. — The atoms, to 
be atoms, that is, simple and impenetrable units, must be 
reciprocally bounded off and separated. There must exist 
something of an opposite nature to themselves, that re- 
ceives them as atoms, and renders possible their separa- 
tion and mutual independence. This is empty space, or, 
more particularly, the spaces existent between the atoms, 
and by which they are kept asunder. The atoms, as 
something beent and jilted ; empty space, as what is void 
or non-beent, — these two characters represent only in a 
real, objective manner, what the moments of the Hera- 
clitic becoming, being and non-being, are as logical 
notions. Objective reality accrues thus to empty space 
as a form of the beent not less than to the atoms, and 
Democritus expressly maintained, as against the Elea* 
tics, ' being is by nothing more real than nothing.' 



26 HI ST OR Y OF PHILOSOPH Y. 

4. Necessity. — With Democritus, as with Empedocles, 
and even more, there occurs the question as to the whence 
of mutation and movement. What is the reason that 
the atoms take on these multiform combinations, and 
produce the wealth of the inorganic and organic worlds ? 
Democritus finds this in the nature of the atoms them- 
selves, to which the vacuum affords room for their alter- 
nate conjunctions and disjunctions. The atoms, vari. 
ously heavy, and afloat in empty space, impinge on each 
other. There arises thus a wider and wider expanding 
movement throughout the general mass ; and, in conse- 
quence of this movement, there take place the various 
complexions, like-shaped atoms grouping themselves with 
like-shaped. These complexions, however, by very 
nature, always resolve themselves again ; and hence the 
transitoriness of worldly things. But this explanation 
of the formation of the world explains in effect nothing i 
it exhibits only the quite abstract idea of an infinite 
causal series, but no sufficient ground of all the pheno- 
mena of becoming and mutation. As such last ground 
there remained, therefore (Democritus expressly oppos- 
ing the vovs, reason, of Anaxagoras), only absolute pre- 
destination or necessity (avdjKr}), which, as in contrast 
to the final causes of Anaxagoras, he is said to have 
named r^xn^ chance. The resultant polemic against the 
popular gods, the idea of whom Democritus derived 
from 'the fear occasioned by atmospheric and stellar 
phenomena, and an ever more openly declared atheism 
and naturalism, constituted the prominent peculiarity of 
the later Atomistic school, which, in Diagoras of Melos, 
the so-called atheist, culminated in a complete sophistic. 

5. Position of the Atomists. — Hegel characterizes this 
position thus : ' In the Eleatic philosophy, being and non- 
being are as in mutual contradiction, — only being is, non- 
being is not. In the Heraclitic idea being and non-being 
are the same, both are together, or becoming is predicate 
of the beent. Being and non-being, again, conceived as 
objects for the perception of sense, constitute the anti- 
thesis of the plenum and the vacuum. As the abstract 
universal, Parmenides assumes being, Heraclitus pro- 
cess, the Atomists individual being (individuality as in 
an atom).' So much is correct here, that the predicate of 
individual being is certainly pertinent to the atoms ; but 
then the thought of the Atomists, and perhaps, of Empe- 
docles, is rather this, that, under presupposition of these 



ANAXaGORAS. 27 

individual unqualified substances, there be explained the 
possibility of mutation. To that end, the side which is 
averse from the Eleatic principle, that of non-being or the 
void, is formed and perfected with no less care than the 
side which is related to it, the primitive independence of 
the atoms, namely, and their want of quality. The Ato- 
mists in this way constitute a conciliation between Hera- 
clitus and the Eleatics. Their atoms, for example, are, 
on the one hand, in their indivisible oneness, Eleatic, but, 
on the other, in their composite plurality, Heraclitic. 
Their absolute filledness, again, is Eleatic, while a real 
non-being, the vacuum, is Heraclitic. Lastly, the denial 
of becoming, or of origination and decease, is Eleatic, 
whereas the assertion of motion and of infinite power of 
combination is Heraclitic. Than Empedocles, at all 
events, Democritus has much more consequently worked 
out his thought ; nay, we may say that he has completed 
the mechanical explanation of nature : his are the ideas 
that constitute the main ideas of every Atomistic theory 
up even to the present day. The radical defect, for the 
rest, of all such theories, was already signalized by Aris- 
totle, when he pointed out that it is a contradiction to 
assume the indivisibility of what is corporeal and spatial, 
and so derive what is extended from what is not ex- 
tended, as well as that the unconscious, motiveless neces- 
sity of Democritus banishes from nature any notion of a 
final cause. It is this latter fault, common as yet to all 
the systems, which the next system, that of Anaxagoras, 
begins, by its doctrine of a designing intelligence, to re- 
move. 

X. — A naxagoras. 

PERSONAL. — Anaxagoras, born in Clazomense about 
the year 500, scion of a rich and noble house, again 
one of those who, in the exclusive investigation of nature 
and its laws, recognise the purpose of their life, took up, 
soon after the Persian war, his abode in Athens, and 
lived a considerable time there, till, being accused of 
blasphemy, he was forced to flee to Lampsacus, where he 
died, much respected and highly honoured, at the age of 
seventy -two. It was he who transplanted philosophy to 
Athens, which thenceforward became the centre of 
Grecian culture. By his personal relations also, espe- 
cially with Pericles, Euripides, and other men of mark, he 



28 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

exercised a decided influence on the progress of the time. 
The accusation of blasphemy was itself a proof of this ; 
for it was raised, doubtless, by the political opponents of 
Pericles. Anaxagoras wrote a work * On Nature,' which 
was widely current in the time of Socrates. 

2. His relation to Predecessors. — The system of 
Anaxagoras rests wholly on the presuppositions of his 
predecessors, and is simply another attempt to solve the 
problem which they had set up. Like Empedocles and 
the Atomists, Anaxagoras, too, denies becoming in the 
proper sense. ' The Greeks,' runs one of his phrases, 
* erroneously assume origination and destruction, for 
nothing originates and nothing is destroyed ; all is only 
mixed or unmixed out of pre-existent things ; and it were 
more correct to name the one process composition, and 
the other decomposition.' From this view, separation of 
matter and of moving force follows, for him as well as 
for his predecessors. But it is here that Anaxagoras 
strikes off in the direction peculiar to himself. Hitherto 
the moving force plainly had been imperfectly conceived. 
The mythical powers of love and hate, the blind neces- 
sity of the mechanical theory, explained nothing; or at 
least, whatever they explained, they certainly explained 
not the existence of design in the process of nature. 
It was consequently seen to be necessary that this 
notion of design should be identified with that of the 
moving power. This Anaxagoras accomplished by his 
idea of a world-forming intelligence (vovs) that was abso- 
lutely separated and free from matter, and that acted on 
design. 

3. The principle oe vovs. — Anaxagoras describes this 
intelligence as spontaneously operative, unmixed with 
anything, the ground of all motion, but itself unmoved, 
everywhere actively present, and of all things the finest 
and purest. If these predicates, in part, rest still on 
physical analogies, and disclose not yet the notion of im- 
materiality in its purity, the attribute, on the other hand, 
of thought and conscious action on design, which Anaxa- 
goras ascribed to the vovs, leaves no doubt of the dis- 
tinctly idealistic character of his principle otherwise. 
He remained standing by the mere statement of his main 
thought, nevertheless, and procured not for it any fulness 
of completion. The explanation of this lies in the origin 
and genetic presuppositions of his principle. It was only 
the necessity of a moving cause, possessed at the same 



ANAXAGORAS. 29 

time of designing activity, that had brought him to the 
idea of an immaterial principle. His vovs is in strictness, 
therefore, only a mover of matter : in this function its 
entire virtue is almost quite exhausted. Hence the 
unanimous complaints of the ancients (especially of Plato 
and Aristotle), of the mechanical character of his doctrine. 
Socrates relates in Plato's Phcedo that, in the hope of 
being brought beyond merely occasional or secondary 
causes and up to final causes, he had applied himself to 
the work of Anaxagoras, but, instead of any truly teleo- 
logical explanation of existence, had found everywhere 
only a mechanical one. And, like Plato, Aristotle also 
complains that Anaxagoras named indeed mind as ulti- 
mate principle of things, but, in explanation of existent 
phenomena, sought its aid only as deus ex machina, — 
there, that is, where he was unable to deduce their neces- 
sity from any natural causes. Anaxagoras thus, then, has 
rather postulated than demonstrated mind as the power 
in nature, as the truth and reality of material existence. 

Side by side with the vovs, and equally original with it, 
there stands, according to Anaxagoras, the mass of the 
primitive constituents of things : ' all things were to- 
gether, infinitely numerous, infinitely little ; then came 
the vovs and set them in order.' These primitive con- 
stituents are not general elements, like those of Empe- 
docles, fire, air, water, earth (which to Anaxagoras are 
already compound and not simple materials) ; but they 
are the identical, infinitely complex materials, constitu- 
tive of the individual existent things (stone, gold, bone- 
stuff, etc., and hence, by succeeding writers, called 
dfjLoiofjLepTj or dfioLOfjiSpeiai, like parts, parts, that is, like to 
their wholes), ' the germs of all things,' pre-existent there, 
infinitely small, infinitely simple, and in perfectly chaotic 
intermixture. The vovs brought movement into this 
inert mass in the form of a vortex that perpetuates itself 
for ever. This vortex separates the like parts and brings 
them together, not however, to the complete exclusion of 
all intermixture of like with unlike ; rather, * in all there 
is something of all,' or each thing consists for the most 
part of its own likes so to speak, but contains within 
it representatives of all the other primitive constituents 
as well. In the case of organized beings, more especially, 
we have the presence of the matter-moving vovs, which, 
as animating soul, is immanent in all living beings (plants, 
animals, men), but in different degrees of amount and 



30 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

power. In this way we see that it is the business of the 
pods to dispose all things, each in accordance with its own 
nature, into a universe, that shall comprehend within it 
the most manifold forms of existence, and to enter into, 
and identify itself with this universe as the power of in- 
dividual vitality. 

4. Anaxagoras as the termination and close of the 
Pre-Socratic Realism. — With the povs, with the acqui- 
sition of an immaterial principle, the realistic period of 
early Greek philosophy concludes. Anaxagoras brings all 
preceding principles into unity and totality. His chaos 
of primitively intermingled things represents the infinite 
matter of the Hylicists ; the pure being of the Eleatics 
is to be found in his povs, as both the becoming of Hera- 
clitus and the moving forces of Empedocles in his shaping 
and regulating power of an eternal mind ; and in his like 
parts or homceomeries we have the atoms. Anaxagoras 
is the last of an old and the first of a new series of deve- 
lopment ; the one by the proposition, the other by the 
incompleteness and persistently physical nature, of his 
ideal principle. 



XL— The Sophists. 

RELATION of the Sophists to the earlier Philo- 
sophers. — The preceding philosophers all tacitly 
assume that our subjective consciousness is in subordi- 
nation and subjection to objective actuality, or that the 
objectivity of things is the source of our knowledge. In 
the Sophists a new principle appears, the principle of sub- 
jectivity ; the view, namely, that things are as they seem 
to us, and that any universal truth exists not. The way 
was prepared for this position, however, by the philosophy 
that preceded it. The Heraclitic doctrine of the flux of 
all things, Zeno's dialectic against the phenomenal world, 
offered weapons enough for the sceptical questioning of 
all stable and objective truth, and even in the povs of 
Anaxagoras, thought was virtually opposed to objectivity 
as the higher principle. On this new- won field now the 
Sophists disported, enjoying with boyish exuberance the 
exercise of the power of subjectivity, and destroying, 
by means of a subjective dialectic, all that had been 
ever objectively established. The individual subject 
recognises himself now as the higher existence and vali- 



THE SOPHISTS. 31 

dity when opposed to the objective world, when opposed, 
particularly, to the laws of the state, to inherited cus- 
tom, to religious tradition, to popular belief ; he seeks to 
prescribe his laws to the objective world, and, instead of 
seeing in the given inherited objectivity, the historical 
realization of reason, he perceives in it only an unspiri- 
tualized dead material on which to exercise his own 
freedom. What characterizes the Sophists, then, is illu- 
minated reflection. They have no philosophical system ; 
for their doctrines and dicta display often so very popular 
and trivial a character, that they would on that account 
deserve no place whatever in the history of philosophy. 
Neither can they be said to compose, in any usual sense, 
a school; for Plato mentions, for example, under the 
common appellation of ' Sophists/ a very great many 
different individuals. What distinguishes them, then, is 
a spiritual movement of the time, with many ramifica- 
tions, and with its roots in the entire social, political, 
and religious character of Hellenic life then — in short, it 
is the Greek Aufkldrung, the Greek illumination, 

2. Relation of the Sophists to the general liee op 
the time. — The Sophists are theoretically what, during 
the Peloponnesian war, Greek political life was practically. 
Plato justly remarks in the Republic that the doctrines 
of the Sophists express properly only the same principles 
which guided the practice of the multitude in their civil 
and social relations, and that the hate with which they 
were persecuted by actual statesmen, precisely proves the 
jealousy with which the latter saw in them as it were 
the rivals and mar-plots of their own policy. If, in fact, 
the absoluteness of the empirical subject (that is, the 
opinion that the single ego may determine quite at its 
own discretion what shall be true, just, good) is the 
principle of the Sophists theoretically, then in the bound- 
less egotism that existed at that time in all the depart- 
ments of life, both public and private, we have but the 
same principle practically applied. Public life was become 
an arena of passion and self-seeking ; the party-strifes, 
which agitated Athens during the Peloponnesian war, 
had blunted and stifled the moral sentiment ; every one 
accustomed himself to set his own private interest above 
that of the state and of the common good, and to seek in 
his own self-will and his own advantage the standard of 
his action and the principle of his guidance. The axiom 
of Protagoras, man is the measure of all things, was in 



32 HISTOR Y OF PHILOSOPHY. 

practice only all too truly followed, while the influence 
of rhetoric in public assemblies and decisions, the corrup- 
tion of the masses and their leaders, the weak points 
which cupidity, vanity, and party-spirit betrayed to the 
crafty, offered only all too much occasion for its exercise. 
What was established, and had come down so, had lost 
its authority, political regulation appeared as arbitrary 
restriction, moral principle as a result of calculated 
political training, faith in the gods as human invention 
for the intimidation of free activity, piety as a statute of 
human origin which every man had a right to alter by the 
art of persuasion. This reduction of the necessity and 
universality of nature and reason to the contingency of 
mere human appointment, is mainly the point where the 
Sophists are in contact with the general consciousness of 
the cultivated classes of the time ; and it is impossible 
to decide what share theory had here, and what practice ; 
whether the Sophists only found practical life in a theo- 
retical formula, or whether the social corruption was 
rather a consequence of the destructive influence which 
the Sophists exercised over the entire circle of the opinion? 
of their contemporaries. 

Nevertheless it would be to mistake the spirit of his- 
tory, did we only condemn the epoch of the Sophists, and 
not allow it a relative justification. The peculiarities 
described were in part necessary results of the whole 
historical development. That belief in the popular reli- 
gion so precipitately collapsed, this was only because the 
religion itself possessed no longer any inner moral vali- 
dity. Mythological example might be alleged in justifi- 
cation or excuse of the greatest vices and the vilest 
actions; and even Plato, however much a friend to 
ancestral piety and faith, accuses the poets of having 
corrupted the moral sentiments of the people by the un- 
worthy representations they had spread abroad in regard 
to the world of gods and heroes. It was inevitable too 
that advancing science should disturb tradition. The 
Hylicists from of old lived in open hostility to the popu- 
lar religion, and the more convincingly they demonstrated 
in analogies and laws the natural causes of many things 
in which the direct action of divine power had been 
hitherto recognised, the more readily would the educated 
classes come to doubt of all their previous convictions. 
It was no wonder, then, if this altered spirit of the time 
penetrated into every province of art and poetry, if in 



THE SOPHISTS. 33 

sculpture, quite in analogy with the rhetorical arts of the 
Sophists, the sentimental took the place of the high style, 
and, if Euripides, the Sophist of tragic poets, brought 
upon the stage the entire philosophy of the day with all 
its mannerism of moral reflection, and made his charac- 
ters, not the supporters of an idea like his predecessors, 
but only excitants of momentary emotion or other stage d 
effect. 

3. Tendencies of the Sophists. — The Greek Sophists, 
like the French illuminati of the last century, displayed 
an encyclopaedic universality of knowledge, and any dis- 
tinct classification of them in accordance with the single 
idea of the historical movement, becomes on this account 
very difficult. The Sophists rendered general culture 
universal. Thus Protagoras was celebrated as a teacher 
of morals, Gorgias as a rhetorician and politician, Prodicus 
as a grammarian and etymologist, and Hippias as a poly- 
math. This last, besides his astronomical and mathe- 
matical studies, occupied himself even with a theory of 
mnemonics. Some set themselves for task the art of 
education, others the exposition of the ancient poets. 
The brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus made war 
and military exercises the object of instruction. Several 
of them, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, fulfilled ambassa- 
dorial functions. In short, the Sophists were to be 
found, each according to his individuality, in all the pro- 
fessions, in all the spheres of knowledge ; what alone 
was common to them all was method. Then tbeir rela- 
tion to the cultivated public, their striving after popu- 
larity, notoriety, and pecuniary emolument suggests the 
inference that their studies and activities were, for the 
most part, directed and determined, not by any objective 
scientific interest, but by external considerations. Wan- 
dering from town to town with that migratory tic so 
characteristic of the later, more special Sophists, announc- 
ing themselves as thinkers by profession, and looking in 
all their operations mainly to good pay and the favour of 
the rich, they naturally chose questions of general interest 
and public advantage, though at times also the private 
fancies of particular rich men, as the objects of their 
discourse. Their special strength, therefore, lay much 
more in formal quickness, in subjective displays of readi- 
ness of wit, in the art of being able to rhetorize, than in 
positive knowledge. Their only instruction in morals 
consisted either in disputatious word- catching, or in 
o 



34 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

hollow rhetorical show ; and even when their information 
rose to polymathy, mere phrasing on the subjects re- 
mained the main point. It is thus we find Hippias in 
Xenophon boasting of being able to say always some- 
thing new on any matter. Of others we are expressly 
told that they did not consider it necessary to have any 
knowledge of the facts in order to speak in any required 
manner on any subject, or answer any question on the 
spur of the moment. Many of them, again, made it a 
point to hold measured discourse on the most insignificant 
objects possible — salt, for instance. In all of them, in- 
deed, we see that the thing considered was but the means, 
while it was the word was the end ; and we cannot 
wonder that they descended in this respect to that empty 
external trickery which Plato in the Phcedrus subjects 
to so keen a criticism, and specially because of its want 
of seriousness and principle. 

4. The historical significance of the Sophists as 
regards Cultctre. — The scientific and moral defects of 
the Sophists call attention of themselves, and require not, 
therefore — especially now that certain later historians 
have, with overstrained zeal, painted their dark side in 
the blackest colours, and brought forward a very serious 
charge of frivolity, immorality, love of pleasure, vanity, 
selfishness, empty disputatiousness, and the false show of 
learning — any further exposition at our hands ; but what 
has been generally overlooked here is the merit of the 
Sophists historically as regards culture. If they possessed, 
as has been said, only the negative merit of having called 
forth the opposition of Socrates and Plato, then the im- 
mense influence and the lofty reputation of so many of 
them, as well as the revolution they produced in the 
thought of an entire nation, were phenomena inexplicable. 
It were inexplicable, for example, how Socrates could 
attend the discourses of Prodicus, and advise others to 
the same, if he did not acknowledge his grammatical 
contributions, and his merits in the interests of a healthy 
logic. In his rhetorical attempts, Protagoras also made 
many successful hits, and felicitously determined particu- 
lar grammatical categories. On the whole, the Sophists 
introduced a profusion of general knowledge among the 
people, scattered a mass of fruitful and suggestive germs, 
called forth investigations into language, logic, and the 
theory of cognition, laid a foundation for the methodic 
treatment of many branches of human inquiry, and 



THE SOPHISTS. 35 

partly originated, partly advanced, that admirable intel- 
lectual life of Athens then. Their linguistic service is 
their greatest. Of Attic prose we may regard them as 
the creators and improvers. They are the first who 
made style, as such, the object of attention and study, 
and instituted more special inquiry into measure and 
rhythm, as into the art of rhetorical expression. Only 
with them, and excited by them, is the commencement 
of Attic eloquence ; and Antiphon and Isocrates, the 
latter the founder of the most flourishing school of rhe- 
toric, are outshoots of the Sophists. There are grounds 
enough, then, surely, for not regarding the entire product 
of the time as a mere symptom of corruption. 

5. The individual Sophists. — The first who is said to 
have been named Sophist in the given sense is Protagoras 
of Abdera, who flourished about the year 440 B.C. He 
taught — and was the first person who demanded payment 
for doing so — in Sicily and Athens. "From this latter 
town he was banished as a blasphemer ; and his book on 
the gods was burned in open market by the public crier. 
It began with the words : — * As for the gods, I am unable 
to know whether they are or whether they are not : for 
there is much that prevents us from knowing these things, 
as well the obscurity of the subject as the shortness of the 
life of man.' In another work he developed his theory of 
cognition or incognition. Proceeding from the Heraclitic 
hypothesis of perpetual flux, and specially applying it to 
the individual subject, he taught that man is the measure 
of all things, of those things that exist, that they are, 
and of those things that do not exist, that they are not. 
That, namely, is true for the percipient subject, what- 
ever, in the perpetual flux of things and himself, he at 
any moment perceives and feels. For theory, then, 
there exists no other relation to the external world 
than sensation of sense, and for practice, no other than 
the gratification of sense. But now, as perception and 
sensation are with countless people countlessly diverse, 
and excessively various even in one and the same per- 
son, there resulted from this the further consequence, 
that there are in general no such things as any objective 
affirmations or determinations whatever ; that opposed 
assertions in regard to the same object are to be received 
as equally true ; that we may dispute pro and contra 
on all things and everything with equal authority ; and 
that neither error nor refutation of error can possibly 



36 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

take place. This proposition, that there is nothing 
absolute, that all is an affair of subjective conception, 
opinion, arbitrary will, found its application, at the hands 
of the Sophists, chiefly to justice and morality. Nothing 
is by nature (<prj<rei) good or bad, but only by positive 
statute or agreement (uojmcp) ; and therefore we may 
make law, or regard as law whatever we please, whatever 
the advantage of the moment brings with it, whatever 
we have the strength and skill to realize. Protagoras 
himself appears not to have attempted any logically 
consequent completion of these propositions in practice ; 
for, according to the testimony of the ancients, an 
estimable personal character cannot be denied him, and 
even Plato (in the dialogue under his name) contents 
himself with imputing to him complete ignorance of the 
nature of morality, whereas the later Sophists are (in the 
Gorgias and Philebus) accused by him of immorality 
in principle. 

After Protagoras, Gorgias was the most celebrated 
Sophist. He came (427) during the Peloponnesian war 
from Leontium in Sicily to Athens, in order to represent 
there the cause of his native town, then oppressed by 
Syracuse. In Athens, after having brought his affairs 
to a successful issue, he dwelt some time, and later in 
Thessaly, where he died about the same time as Socrates. 
The swashbuckler ostentation of his external appearance 
is more than once mockingly mentioned by Plato. A like 
character marked his occasional speeches, which sought 
to dazzle by poetical ornaments, flowery metaphors, 
unusual phraseology, and a multitude of previously un- 
known figures of rhetoric. As a philosopher he at- 
tached himself to the Eleatics, especially to Zeno, in 
order that, with their dialectical schematism as basis, 
he might demonstrate that nothing exists, or if some- 
thing exists, that it cannot be known, or if it can be 
known, that it cannot be communicated. His work 
then bore, characteristically enough, the title, — ' Of the 
Non-existent, or of Nature. ' The proof of the first proposi- 
tion — namely, that nothing exists, since whatever were 
assumed to exist can neither be something existent nor 
something non-existent, because something existent must 
have either originated or not originated, neither of which 
alternatives is possible to thought — rests principally on 
the assumption that everything that actually is holds of 
space, or is corporeal and local, and is therefore the ulti- 



THE SOPHISTS. 37 

mate, self-negating consequence, the self-resolution of 
the preceding physical philosophy. 

The later Sophists, in the consequences they drew, 
advanced with unhesitating audacity far beyond Gorgias 
and Protagoras. They were for the most part free- 
thinkers, whose views could only tend to destroy the 
national religion, laws, and observances. In this con- 
nexion, Critias the tyrant, Polus, and Thrasymachus are 
specially to be named. The two latter openly charac- 
terized might as the law of nature, the unrespecting 
gratification of desire as the natural right of the stronger, 
and the institution of restrictive laws as the cunning 
invention of the weaker ; and Critias, the ablest but the 
cruellest of the thirty tyrants, described, in a poem, 
faith in the gods as the invention of crafty politicians. 
Hippias of Elis, the polymath, bears a better character, 
although, perhaps, not behind the others in vain-glory 
and the mania of ostentation. But of them all the best 
was Prodicus of Ceos, from whom comes the proverb, 
* wiser than Prodicus, ' and of whom Plato, nay even 
Aristophanes, speaks not without respect. Particularly 
well known among the ancients were his parenetic com- 
positions on the choice of the road in life (Hercules 
at the parting of the ways, adopted by Socrates in 
Xenophon's Memorabilia, n. 1), on worldly goods and 
the use of them, on life and death, etc., discourses in 
which he displays a chastened moral feeling and fine ob- 
servation of life, although, in consequence of the want 
of a higher ethical and scientific principle, he must be 
placed inferior to Socrates, as whose predecessor he has 
been sometimes designated. The still later generations 
of Sophists, as they appear in Plato's Euthydemus, had 
sunk to common buffoonery and a disgraceful greed of 
money; their dialectical arts they expressed in certain for- 
mulas for syllogisms of a captious and sophistical nature. 

6. Transition to Socrates, and Character of the 
following Period. — The right of the Sophists is the right 
of subjectivity, of self -consciousness (that is to say, the 
demand that all that is to be acknowledged by me shall 
establish itself as reasonable to my consciousness) ; its 
unright is the regarding of this subjectivity as only finite, 
empirical, egoistic subjectivity (that is to say, the demand 
that my contingent will and personal opinion shall have 
the decision of what is reasonable) ; its right is to have 
established the principle of free-will, of self-conviction, 



38 HI ST OR Y OF PHIL OSOPH F. 

its unright is to have set upon the throne the contingent 
will and judgment of the individual. To complete the 
principle of free-will and self-consciousness into its 
truth, and by the same means of reflection, with which 
the Sophists had been able only to destroy, to win a veri- 
table world of objective thought, an absolute import, 
to set in the place of empirical subjectivity absolute or 
ideal subjectivity, objective will, and rational thought, 
— this now was the task which Socrates undertook, and 
achieved. Instead of empirical subjectivity, that abso- 
lute or ideal subjectivity should be made the principle, 
this means, that it is announced as known and acknow- 
ledged fact, that the true standard of all things is not 
my, this single person's, opinion, pleasure, and will ; that 
it does not depend on my or any other empirical subject's 
good-will and election what is to be true, right, and 
good, but that what is to decide here is certainly my 
thought, but also my thought, or that which is rational 
in me. My thought, my reason, however, is not some- 
thing specially appertaining to me, but something com- 
mon to all rational beings, something universal ; and so 
far as I comport myself as a rational, thinking being, my 
subjectivity is a universal subjectivity. But every 
thinking being has the consciousness that what he holds 
for right, duty, good, is not merely so to him, but that 
it is so also for every rational being, and that conse- 
quently his thought has the character of universality, a 
universal validity, in a word, objectivity. This, there- 
fore, is, as opposed to that of the Sophists, the stand- 
point of Socrates, and on this account there begins with 
him the philosophy of objective thought. What Socrates 
could do in contradistinction to the Sophists was this, 
to bring it about that reflection should lead to the same 
results as had been previously realized in unreflecting 
faith and submission, and that the thinking man should, 
of free consciousness and his own conviction, judge and 
act in the same manner as life and established custom 
had hitherto unconsciously dictated to ordinary persons. 
That undoubtedly man is the measure of all things, but 
man as a universal, thinking, rational man — -this is the 
fundamental thought of Socrates, and the philosophy of 
Socrates is by virtue of this thought the positive comple- 
ment of the Sophistic principle. 

With Socrates begins the second period of Greek philo- 
sophy. It realizes itself in three great philosophical 



SOCRATES. 39 

systems, the originators of which, connected personally 
also in the relation of teachers and taught, represent 
three successive generations — Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. 



XII. — Socrates. 

HIS Personality. — In Socrates, the new philoso- 
phical principle appears as a personal character. 
His philosophy is wholly individual practice ; life and 
doctrine cannot in his case be separated. A full exposi- 
tion of his philosophy is therefore essentially biography ; 
and what Xenophon records as the particular doctrine of 
Socrates, is for this reason only an abstraction of the 
Socratic character, as expressed in casual conversation. 
As such archetypal personality, Plato in especial has con- 
ceived his master. The glorifying of the historical 
Socrates is the motive particularly of his later and riper 
dialogues, and of these the Banquet is the noblest apo- 
theosis of the personal Socrates, as the incarnated Eros, 
of love to philosophy realized in a character. 

Socrates was born in the year 469 B.C. ; he was the 
son of Sophroniscus, a statuary, and of Phsenarete, a 
midwife. ' He was brought up in his youth to his father's 
calling, and not without success. As late as the time 
of Pausanias, who saw them, there existed on the Acro- 
polis three statues of draped Graces, which were desig- 
nated as works of Socrates. For the rest, there is little 
known historically of the formation of his character. 
He availed himself, indeed, of the lessons of Prodicus 
and the musician Damon, but he stands in no relation to 
any philosopher proper, either before or at the same time 
as himself. All that he became was due to himself, and 
for that very reason he constitutes a chief crisis of 
ancient philosophy. He has been named by some a 
disciple of Anaxagoras, and by others of the Hylicist 
Archelaus ; but the one statement is demonstrably false, 
and the other at least improbable. Other means of cul- 
ture than those offered by the place of his birth he seems 
never to have sought. With the exception of a holiday 
trip, and the expeditions to Potidaea, Delium, and Ainphi- 
polis, in which he served, he was never out of Athens. 

How early Socrates may have begun to devote him- 
self to the teaching of youth, can — the date of the Del- 
phic oracle which pronounced him the wisest of men 



40 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

being unknown, — be only approximately inferred from 
the time of the first representation of the Clouds of 
Aristophanes, which took place in the year 423. In the 
productions of his disciples, he appears almost invariably 
as already elderly, or even old. His manner of instruct- 
ing was quite free and easy, conversational, popular, 
taking its occasions from what was nearest and plainest, 
borrowing examples and illustrations from things of 
every day (his contemporaries reproached him with al- 
ways speaking of pack-asses, smiths, cobblers, and cur- 
riers), quite the opposite of the pretentious ostentation 
of the Sophists. Ifc is thus we find him on the market- 
place, in the gymnasia, and workshops, occupied early and 
late, in discoursing on life and the purpose of life with 
yoaths, with younger men and older men, in convicting 
them of their own ignorance, and in rousing within them 
the slumbering seeds of knowledge. In every human 
endeavour, were it directed to the affairs of the state or 
to the affairs of the house, to business, to knowledge, or 
to art, he knew always, magister as he was of spiritual 
obstetrics, how to find points of connexion for the 
quickening of true knowledge and moral self-reflection, 
how frequently soever his attempts miscarried, or were 
rejected with bitter contempt, and requited with hatred 
and ingratitude. But inspired by a clear conviction 
that a thorough amendment of the state must proceed 
from a sound instructing of youth, he remained, to the 
vocation he had chosen, true to the last. Wholly Greek 
in these relations to the rising generation, he loves to call 
himself the most zealous eroticist, Greek also in this, 
that in comparison with those free relations of friendship, 
domestic life was with him quite in the background. 
Nowhere does he bestow any great attention on his wife 
and children ; the notorious, if even much exaggerated 
shrewishness of Xantippe allows us a glimpse of no un- 
interrupted domestic felicity. 

As man, as a practically wise man, Socrates is depicted 
by all the authorities in the brightest colours. ' He was,' 
says Xenophon, ' so pious, that he did nothing without 
the sanction of the gods ; so just that he never wronged 
any one even in the least degree ; so much master of 
himself that he never preferred the agreeable to the 
good ; so wise that in deciding on the better and the 
worse he never failed,' in short, he was ' the best and 
happiest man that could possibly exist,' (Xenoph. Mem. 



SOCRATES. 41 

I. 1. 11 ; IY. 8. 11). What, however, invests his person 
with so attractive a peculiarity, is the happy combination 
and harmonious blending of his characteristic qualities 
as a whole, the perfection of an equally universal and 
thoroughly original nature. In this many-sided tact, 
this skill to reconcile in one harmonious whole the 
most contradictory and incompatible qualities, in his 
triumphant superiority to human weakness, in a word, 
in his consummate originality, he is best represented 
in the brilliant panegyric of Alcibiades, in the Banquet 
of Plato. But even in the more sober description 
of Xenophon we find him everywhere a classic shape, 
a man replete with the finest social qualities, full 
of Attic urbanity, infinitely removed from all gloomy, 
anxious asceticism, a man as doughty in battle as in the 
drinking-bout, with all his self -reflection and all his self- 
control moving in the most unconstrained freedom, a 
consummate type of the happiest Athenian era, without 
the sourness, the unsociableness, the morbid self -seclusion 
of later men, a pious and peaceful exemplar of genuinely 
human excellence. A particularly characteristic feature 
is the 'demonic ' element which he attributed to himself. 
He believed himself to receive from an inner divine 
voice, premonitions in regard to the success and unsuc- 
cess of men's undertakings, warnings of this and of that. 
It was the fine, deep, divining tact and instinct of a pure 
soul, that saw clearly into life, and involuntarily pre- 
saged the good and the consequent everywhere, even in 
the most individual emergency, that announced itself in 
these warnings, and nothing could have been more erro- 
neous than the endeavour of his accusers to construe this 
demonic reference into a denial of the national gods, and 
an attempt at the introduction of new divinities. There 
certainly lay in this, that with Socrates this oracle of 
inner prophecy assumed the place of the established 
means of prediction and augury, which was already an 
advance to an inwardness of individual judgment alien 
as yet to the Grecian mind. But this advance was an 
involuntary one ; Socrates himself still held by the an- 
cient form of faith in a transcendent revelation ; he was 
without opposition to the prevailing ideas, and conformed 
therefore perfectly to the national religion in general, al- 
though it had taken on with him the more philosophical 
form of a belief in a supreme iatelligence of the universe, 
that ordered all things with design. 



42 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, 

2. Socrates and Aristophanes. — Through the entire 
mode and manner of his personality, Socrates appears 
fco have early acquired a universal notoriety. Nature had 
already furnished him with a striking exterior. His 
broad, bent, upturned nose, his great prominent eyes, 
his bald pate, his thick stomach, gave him a striking re- 
semblance to Silenus, a comparison which is wrought 
out in Xenophon's Banquet with lively fun, in Plato's, 
with equal ingenuity and penetration of thought. This 
singular figure was made still more remarkable by his 
shabby clothes, his want of shoes, his peculiar gait, his 
trick of standing still frequently and of throwing his 
eyes about. With all this it cannot seem strange to us 
that the Athenian comedy should have seized for itself 
so striking a personality. In the case of Aristophanes 
there was present yet another and a peculiar element. 
Aristophanes, namely, was the most devoted admirer of 
the good old times, the enthusiastic panegyrist of ances- 
tral institutions and polity. As his chief effort is always 
to awaken and quicken again in the people the desire for 
these good old times, so his passionate hatred is directed 
against all the modern tendencies in politics, art, and 
philosophy, against that growing illumination (Auf- 
klarerei), that advances hand in hand with a degenerat- 
ing democracy. Hence his envenomed ridicule of Cleon 
the demagogue (in the Knights), of Euripides the melo- 
dramatic poet (in the Frogs), of Socrates the Sophist (in 
the Clouds). The last, as representative of a quibbling 
pernicious philosophy, must appear equally destructive 
to him as in politics the party of the movement that un- 
scrupulously trampled under foot all the inheritance of 
antiquity. And thus, then, it is the leading thought of 
the Clouds to expose Socrates to public contempt as 
representative of the teaching of the Sophists, of a use- 
less, idle, youth-corrupting, manners-and-morals-under- 
mining, sham wisdom. The motives of Aristophanes in 
this may, from a politico-ethical point of view, be found 
excusable, but they are not justifiable. It is certainly 
true that Socrates had much formal likeness to the 
Sophists, but no such circumstance is sufficient to justify 
Aristophanes' picture of him, a picture into which all the 
characteristic features of the Sophists, even the vilest 
and hatefullest, are introduced, but without interfering 
with the success of the resemblance. The Clouds can be 
regarded only as a lamentable misunderstanding, as a 



SOCRATES. 43 

wrong prompted by the blindness of passion ; and Hegel, 
when he attempts a defence of the proceedings of Aristo- 
phanes, forgets that the comic poet may caricature, but 
without having recourse to manifest calumny. The 
whole politico-social tendency of Aristophanes, in general, 
rests on a great misunderstanding of historical progress. 
The good old times, as he pictures them, are a fiction. 
As little as an adult can ever again become a child by 
course of nature, so little does it lie in the power of pos- 
sibility to bring back by main force the unreflecting 
obedience and simple naivete of the infancy of a people, 
into an age in which reflection has eaten into and licked 
up all spontaneous instinct, all unconscious pious inno- 
cence. Aristophanes himself pronounces the impossibi- 
lity of such return, when in mad humour, with cynical 
mockery, he abandons to ridicule all authorities, human 
and divine, and so gives proof that, however worthy the 
patriotic background of his comic extravagance may be, 
even he stands no longer on the level of ancestral virtue, 
that even he is the son of his time. 

3. The Condemnation of Socrates. — Four-and- twenty 
years later, Socrates fell a sacrifice to the same confound- 
ing of his objects with those of the Sophists, and to the 
same tendency to restore by violent means the political 
faith and pious trust of the past. After he had lived 
many years, occupying himself in his wonted way at 
Athens, after the storms of the Peloponnesian war and 
the despotism of the thirty tyrants had passed over this 
state, after democracy had been restored in it, he was 
summoned, in the seventieth year of his age, into court, 
and accused of denying the national divinities, introduc- 
ing new gods, and seducing the young. His accusers 
were, Melitus, a young poet, Anytus, a demagogue, 
and Lycon, an orator, three men insignificant in every 
respect, but, as it appears, not prompted, nevertheless, 
by any motive of personal enmity. The result of the 
accusation was the condemnation of Socrates. Reject- 
ing all opportunities of flight, but allowed by a fortunate 
accident thirty days of the society of his friends in 
prison, he drank the poison appointed by the State, and 
died in the year 399 B.C. 

The first motive of his accusation was, as said, his 
identification with the Sophists, the actual belief that his 
teaching and influence were characterized by the same 
dangerous principles, in a political aspect, by which the 



44 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Sophists had already given rise to so much evil. To this 
all the three articles in the accusation point, though 
manifestly resting on misunderstandings : they are 
exactly the same as those by which Aristophanes sought 
to expose the Sophist in the person of Socrates. Seduc- 
tion of the young, introduction of new principles of 
morality, of new modes of education and discipline, — 
these charges were precisely those which had been brought 
against the Sophists, and it brings light to find that 
one of the three accusers, Anytus, appears in Plato's 
Meno as a bitter foe to the Sophists and their methods 
of instruction. Denial of the national gods is quite simi- 
larly situated; it was as accused of this that already 
Protagoras had had to flee from Athens. Even five 
years after the death of Socrates, Xenophon, who had 
not been present at the trial, thought it necessary to 
write his Memorabilia in defence of his master, so uni- 
versal and inveterate was the prejudice against him. 

There was present also another, and perhaps more 
decisive element, a political one. Socrates was no aristo- 
crat, but he was too firm of character ever to lend him- 
self to an accommodation with the humours of the 
sovereign masses, and too truly convinced of the neces- 
sity of a lawful and intelligent control of political affairs, 
to be able to make friends with the Athenian democracy 
as it was. Nay, to this latter, from his whole mode of 
life, he could only seem a bad citizen. He had never 
employed himself in State affairs ; only once, as chief 
president of the Prytanes, had he filled a public office, 
and then only to fall into opposition to the will of the 
people and of those who held power (Plat. Apol. p. 32 ; 
Xenoph. Mem. I. 1. 18) ; for the first time in his life he 
ascended the tribune in his seventieth year, on the occa- 
sion of his own accusal (Plat. Apol p. 17). There was 
added to this, that he allowed only men of knowledge 
and discrimination to be entitled to administer State 
affairs ; that on every occasion he spoke against democratic 
institutions, especially election by ballot ; that he gave 
the Spartan State the decided preference over the Athe- 
nian ; and that by his intimate relations with the former 
heads of the oligarchical party, he excited the mistrust 
of the democrats (Xenoph. Mem. I. 2. 9). Amongst 
other men of oligarchical, Spartan -favouring tendencies, 
Critias, one of the thirty, had been his disciple, and 
Alcibiades no less — two men who had wrought the 



SOCBA TES. 45 

Athenian people so much woe. When we see it per- 
fectly authenticated that two of his accusers were consi- 
derable men of the democratic party, and further that 
his judges were men who had taken flight at the time of 
the thirty, and who had subsequently overthrown the 
sway of the oligarchy, we find it more intelligible how 
they, in pronouncing sentence against the accused, be- 
lieved themselves to be acting in the interest of the 
democratic principle, especially besides as appearances 
enough could be brought against him. That they pro- 
ceeded with such rapidity and haste cannot surprise us 
in the case of a generation which had grown up during 
the Peloponnesian war, and a people that rushed as quickly 
to violent resolutions as they again repented them. ISTay, 
when we consider, that Socrates scorned to have recourse 
to the usual forms and expedients of the capitally 
accused, and to win the compassion of the people by 
lamentation and flattery, that, in the proud confidence of 
his innocence, he bade defiance to his judges, we shall 
rather on the contrary be inclined to wonder that his 
condemnation was carried only by a majority of from three 
to six. And even then he had it in his power to avoid 
the sentence of death, had he, in the appraising of his 
punishment, but consented to bow himself before the 
award of the sovereign people ; but as he scorned to 
seek to mitigate the penalty by the exchange (to a fine, 
perhaps) allowed him by custom, because this would 
have been to acknowledge himself guilty, this defiance 
of the condemned so exasperated, as was to be expected, 
the excitable Athenians, that it is quite intelligible how 
eighty of the judges who had previously voted for his 
acquittal, now voted for his death. And thus an accusa- 
tion, in the first instance perhaps, only intended to 
humble the aristocratic philosopher, and compel his ac- 
knowledgment of the competence and majesty of the 
people, had a result the most deplorable, and afterwards 
bitterly repented by the Athenians themselves. 

Hegel's view of the fate of Socrates, when he sees in 
it a tragical collision of equally legitimate forces, the 
tragedy of Athens, and apportions blame and blameless- 
ness to each side equally, is not borne out historically, 
as neither Socrates can be exclusively regarded as only 
representative of the modern spirit, of the principle of 
free-will, of subjectivity, of inwardness, nor his judges 
as champions of the ancient Attic obedience to established 



46 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

observance. This is not so in the former case, for So- 
crates, although his principle was incompatible with that 
of old Greek observance, stood yet so much on the basis 
of the traditional that the accusations brought against 
him were in this shape groundless and false. Nor is this 
any more so in the latter case, for at that time, subsecu- 
tive to the Peloponnesian war, the ancient principle and 
piety had long shown themselves in the entire people 
canker eaten, and had given place to the new ideas ; and 
the prosecution of Socrates is rather to be regarded as an 
attempt to restore by force, at the same time with the an- 
cient constitution, the dead-letter as well of ancient custom 
and inherited mode of thought. The blame consequently 
is not to be equally distributed to the two sides, and the 
conclusion must remain this, that Socrates fell a sacrifice 
to a misunderstanding, to an unwarranted reaction. 

4. The Sources of the Socratic Philosophy. — It is 
an old and well-known controversy as to whether Xeno- 
phon or Plato is to be regarded as having drawn histori- 
cally the truer and completer image of Socrates, and as 
being the source of the Socratic philosophy. This question 
comes more and more to be decided in favour of Xenophon. 
It has been frequently attempted, indeed, as well in more 
ancient as in more modern times, to disparage Xenophon's 
Memorabilia as a shallow and incompetent authority, be- 
cause their homely and nothing less than speculative mat- 
ter appeared to afford no satisfactory motives for such a 
revolution in the realm of spirit as is attributed to So- 
crates, for the lustre which invests his name in history, 
or for the role which Plato assigns to him ; further, 
this opinion has been maintained, because the Memora- 
bilia bear on their face an apologetic purpose, and the 
defence they contain concerns not so much the philoso- 
pher as the man ; finally because they were supposed to 
give the impression that they had degraded philosophical 
statement into the unphilosophical style of the common 
understanding. There were distinguished thus an exoteric 
and an esoteric Socrates, the former drawn from Xeno- 
phon, the latter from Plato. But the giving of precedence 
to Plato over Xenophon has, in the first place, no his- 
torical right on its side, so far as Xenophon presents 
himself as an historian and asserts a claim to historical 
authenticity, while Plato, on the contrary, only in a few 
passages expressly gives himself out as an historical 
narrator, but by no means wishes all the rest that is put 



SOCRA TES. 47 

into the mouth of Socrates to be regarded as authentic 
speech and utterance of this latter ; and we possess no 
historical right, therefore, to view at will what belongs 
to Plato as belonging also to Socrates ; secondly, the 
subordination of Xenophon rests for the most part on the 
false conception that Socrates had a philosophy, that is 
a speculative philosophy, on an unhistorical mistaking of 
the limits by which the philosophical character of So- 
crates was necessarily conditioned and opposed. There 
was not even a Socratic doctrine, but only a Socratic 
life ; and just in this we have the explanation of the 
disparate philosophical directions of his followers. 

5. General Character op the Socratic Philoso- 
phizing. — The philosophizing of Socrates is conditioned 
and determined by its antithesis partly to the preceding 
philosophy, partly to the teaching of the Sophists. 

The pre-Socratic philosophy was in essential character 
an investigation of nature. With Socrates, mind for the 
first time turns on its own self, on its own essential nature, 
but it does this in the directest fashion, in that it regards 
itself as active, or as endowed with morality. The posi- 
tive philosophizing of Socrates is exclusively of an ethical 
nature, exclusively an inquiry into virtue, and so exclu- 
sively and one-sidedly this, that, as is always the way on 
the appearance of a new principle, it even announced itself 
as a despising of the preceding endeavour, of natural 
philosophy and mathematics. Placing all under the point 
of view of direct moral furtherance, Socrates found in 
'irrational' nature so little worth study, that he could 
conceive it rather in a common teleological manner only as 
external means to external ends. Nay, as he says in 
Plato's Phcedrus, he never goes out into the country for a 
walk as there is nothing to be learned from fields and trees. 
Knowledge of one's-self, the Delphic yvQ6c aeavrdp, this 
appeared to him as the single problem worthy of a man, 
as the starting-point of all philosophizing. All other 
knowledge he called so insignificant and worthless, that 
he purposely boasted of his ignorance, and conceived that 
his pronounced superiority in wisdom to other men must 
lie in the fact that he, for his part, knew his ignorance 
(Plat. Apol. p. 21, 23). 

The other side of the Socratic philosophizing is its op- 
position to the philosophy of the time. He understood 
his task here, and saw that it consisted in placing him- 
self on the same ground as the Sophists themselves, 



48 HISTOR Y OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and in conquering them through themselves, through 
their own principle. That he shared their position has 
been already observed. Many of his opinions, particu- 
larly the propositions that no one intentionally does 
wrong, and that whoever intentionally lies, or otherwise 
does wrong, is better than he who should do the same 
unknowingly, — bear at the first glance a quite Sophistic 
stamp. The higher tenet of the Sophists, that all moral 
action must be a conscious action, is not less his. But, 
whilst the Sophists made it their business, by means of 
subjective reflection, to confound and subvert all estab- 
lished prescripts, and render impossible all objective 
standards, Socrates recognised thought as the act of the 
universal, the free objective idea as the measure of all 
things, and so brought back duty and all moral action 
in general, from the opinion and caprice of the indi- 
vidual, to the true principle, the principle of universal 
objective spirit. It was under guidance of this idea of 
an absolutely true cognition, that he endeavoured to 
establish by thought unconditioned universal moral as- 
signments, and to acquire possession of a rational objec- 
tivity that should be absolutely fixed, absolutely certain 
in itself, and perfectly independent of the self-will of the 
individual. Hegel's expression for this is, that Socrates 
set Moralitat in the place of Sittlichkeit (the subjective 
morality of individual conscience in place of the objective 
morality of societary observance). Hegel, that is, distin- 
guishes Moralitat as the conscious, reflecting right-doing 
that rests on internal principles, from Sittlichkeit as the 
spontaneous, natural, half unconscious (almost instinctive) 
virtue that rests on obedience to established custom (use 
and wont, natural objective law, that is at bottom, 
according to Hegel, rational, though not yet subjectively 
cleared, perhaps, into its rational principles). This ethi- 
cal endeavour of Socrates had for logical presupposition, 
the method of definition, that is, the ascertainment and 
establishment in any matter of the notions involved. 
Xenophon relates (Mem. IV. 6. 1), that Socrates was 
uninterruptedly employed in trying to find the ' what * 
of everything ; and Aristotle says expressly (Meta. xii. 
4), that two merits must be conceded to Socrates, the 
method of induction, and logical definitions (definitions of 
the implied notions, the universals), two things which 
constitute the foundation of science. How both cohere 
with the principle of Socrates, we shall presently see. 



SOCRATES. 4? 

6. The Socratic Method. — Of the Socratic method we 
must UDderstand that, in contrast to what is now called 
method, it rose not in the consciousness of Socrates for- 
mally as method, and in abstraction, therefore, from every 
concrete case, but that it had spontaneously grown up 
with the very mode and manner of his philosophizing, 
which last aimed not at the communication of a system, 
but at the schooling of the individual himself into philo- 
sophical thought and life. His method was only the 
subjective art he applied in his pedagogical procedure, 
only the manner that was peculiar to him in his philo- 
sophical intercourse in actual life. 

The Socratic method has two sides, the one negative 
and the other positive. The negative one is what is 
known as the Socratic irony. Making believe to be 
ignorant, namely, and seeming to solicit information from 
those with whom he conversed, the philosopher would 
unexpectedly turn the tables on his seeming instructors, 
and confound their supposed knowledge, as well by the 
unlooked-for consequences which he educed by his inces- 
sant questions, as by the glaring contradictions in which 
they were in the end by their own admissions landed. In 
the perplexity in which one is placed when one finds one's- 
self not to know what one supposed one's-self to know, 
this supposed knowledge itself executes, we may say, on 
its own self, its own process of destruction. By way of 
gain, however, the representative of the supposed know- 
ledge becomes mistrustful of his own presuppositions, of 
his accustomed fixed ideas ; ' what we knew has refuted 
itself/ — this is the refrain of the most of these dialogues. 

But, were this all, the outcome of the Socratic method 
would be only to know that we do not know ; and, in- 
deed, both in Xenophon and in Plato, a great part of the 
dialogues ostensibly does stop with only this negative re- 
sult. There is, in effect, another moment, however, by 
means of which the irony loses its merely negative look. 

This positive side of the Socratic method is the maieu- 
tic (that is, maieutic or obstetric art). Socrates likened 
himself, namely, to his mother Phsenarete, who was a 
midwife, because, if no longer able to bear thoughts him- 
self, he was still quite able to help others to bear them, 
as well as to distinguish those that were sound from 
those that were unsound (Plat. Thecet. p. 149). The 
nature of this spiritual midwifery will be more distinctly 
seen, if we consider that the philosopher, by means of 

D 



50 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

his incessant questioning and the resultant disentangle- 
ment of ideas, possessed the art of eliciting from him 
with whom he conversed a new and previously unknown 
thought, and so of helping to a birth his intellectual throes. 
A chief means here was his method of induction, or the 
transformation of the conception ( Vorstellung) into the 
notion (Begriff). Proceeding, for example, from some 
certain concrete case, and, at the same time, assisting 
himself by connexion with the most usual conceptions, 
the most trivial and commonplace facts of sense, the 
philosopher contrived, ever comparing particular with 
particular, and so gradually separating and casting out 
what was contingent and accidental, to bring to con- 
sciousness a universal truth, a universal discernment, 
that is, to form notions (universals) . To find the notion 
of justice, of fortitude, for instance, departure was taken 
from several particular examples of justice, of fortitude, 
and from them the universal nature, the notion of these 
virtues, abstracted. From this we see what the Socratic 
induction aimed at, — logical definition. I define a notion 
when I tell its what, its nature, its tenor, import, or con- 
tained meaning. I define the notion of justice, when I 
exhibit the logical unity of its various forms in actual 
experience, what is common to all of them. And this 
was the object of Socrates. c To investigate the nature 
of virtue,' says Aristotle (Bud. Eth. I. 5), 'appeared to 
Socrates the problem of philosophy, and for this end 
he inquired what is justice, what fortitude (that is, he 
demanded the essence, nature, the notion of justice), for 
all virtue was to him knowledge.* In what connexion 
this his method of definition, or of the formation of 
notions, stood with his practical objects, is from this 
easily to be inferred. He sought the notion of each 
separate virtue, justice for instance, only because he was 
convinced, namely, that the knowledge of this notion, 
that a clear perception of it, was the surest guide for every 
particular case, for every particular moral relation. All 
moral action, he believed, must proceed from the notion 
as something consciously known and understood. 

In accordance with this, the Socratic method may be 
described as the art of finding, by means of induction, 
in a certain sum of given particular cases, their under- 
lying and supporting, or fundamental universal, their 
logical unity. This method has for its presupposition 
the acknowledgment that the true nature of the objects 



SOCBATES. 51 

in the world lies in thought, and can be discovered by- 
thought ; that the notion is the true being of things. 
We see from this how the Platonic theory of ideas was 
but an objectivizing of this method, which method, in 
the case of Socrates, is as yet but a subjective knack 
or skill. Plato's ideas are but Socrates' universals 
(generalized notions), conceived as real definite exist- 
ences. Aristotle, then (Meta. xui. 4), precisely hits 
the relation of the method of Socrates to the ideas of 
Plato, when he says : ' Socrates did not consider the 
universals as particular substances separately existent ; 
this was Plato's work, who forthwith named them ideas.' 
7. The Socratic Doctrine of Virtue. — The only posi- 
tive tenet which has come down from Socrates is, that vir- 
tue is knowledge, wisdom, intellectual discernment. In 
other words, virtue is an act that proceeds from a clearly- 
understood recognition of the notion of whatever any 
particular action contemplates, of the ends, means, and 
conditions that belong to this action, and not, therefore, 
any merely innate or mechanically acquired power and 
ability. Action without perception is a contradiction, and 
destroys itself; action with perception carries straight 
to the mark. Consequently, there can be nothing bad 
that happens with perception, and nothing good that 
happens without perception. Defect of perception it 
is that leads men into vicious acts. There follows from 
this the further proposition, nobody is willingly wicked ; 
the wicked are wicked against their own wills. Nay 
more, whoever knowingly does wrong is better than he 
who does so unknowingly ; for in the latter case, as 
knowledge is wanting, virtue in general must also be 
wanting, while in the former case, were it supposed pos- 
sible, virtue would be only temporarily injured. Socrates 
would not admit that anybody could know the good 
without immediately doing it. The good was not to 
him, as it was to the Sophists, an arbitrary law, but that 
on which unconditionally depended the well-being of the 
individual as well as of the race, and this, because it was 
alone an intellectual act. Thus, too, that he who desired 
his own happiness, should at the same time knowingly 
neglect it, amounted to him to a logical contradiction ; for 
to his mind, the good doing followed as necessarily from 
the good knowing, as the logical conclusion from the logi- 
cal premises. The proposition that virtue is knowledge, 
has for logical consequence the unity and identity of all 



32 HI ST OB Y OF PHIL SOP II Y. 

virtues, so far as the intellectual perception that condi- 
tions the right act is universally one and the same, let it 
be directed to what objects it may. The same proposi- 
tion again has for practical consequence the teachable- 
ness of virtue ; and it is because of this teachableness that 
virtue is something universally human, something through 
instruction and practice to be attained to by every one. 
With these three propositions, which comprise all that 
can be called Socratic philosophy, Socrates laid the first 
stone of a scientific theory of morals, which accordingly 
dates only from him. No more than the first stone, how- 
ever ; and partly because he attempted no completion of 
his principle in all its details, no realization of a concrete 
moral theory, but often, in good old fashion, referred 
only to the laws of the state, or to the unwritten laws of 
universal usage ; partly also because he not unfrequently 
supported his ethical principles on external, utilitarian, 
eudaemonistic motives, that is, on the particular advan- 
tages and profitable results of virtue ; a manner, how- 
ever, in which we do not the less miss the more strictly 
scientific treatment. Although the obligation to morality 
lay for him in the fact that man, as a thinking reasonable 
being, must, unless indeed he would fall below himself , act 
with rational judgment and purpose, still he stood withal 
completely on the platform of his day, and conceived 
virtue at the same time as the road to the realization of 
the specific objects of well-being, happiness, content- 
ment, power, and honour. These objects he received as 
experience gave them to him, without comprehending 
them again in a higher collective object ; he summoned 
to one and the same virtue in all the spheres of action, 
but he left these spheres themselves still lying in that 
empirical contingency which they possess for our ordinary 
consciousness and conviction in the practice of life. An 
exaltation over sensuous greeds and cravings, a freedom 
from desire such as lifts man nearest to God, a calm of 
mind whose equilibrium is never to be ruffled, a glad 
consciousness of undiminished strength and integrity of 
soul — these, in his own person, no doubt, he exhibited 
as the highest happiness, and thus already identified the 
notions of virtue and felicity. But he expressed this, not 
as a universal, but as an individual principle ; he lived 
too much in the old way of looking at things to be able 
to deny the authority of actual concrete ends, and to 
sacrifice them to his personal ideal of happiness. 



THE INCOMPL ETE SOCRA TICS. 53 



XIII. — The Incomplete Socratics. 

THEIR Relation to the Socratic Doctrine. — The 
death of Socrates was the transfiguration of the life 
of Socrates into an archetypal universal or universal arche- 
type, which, as inspiring principle, acted henceforth in 
many directions. This conception of Socrates as general 
exemplar, we find, indeed, to be the common character of 
the first Socratic schools. That a universal, absolutely 
true end must guide mankind, this was the necessary con- 
sequence of the Socratic principle, which declares it the 
business of man to give his action unity and law through 
thought. But as there appeared in answer to the ques- 
tion, In what does this end consist? no complete, scien- 
tific Socratic system, but only a life, the life of Socrates, 
so many-sided, and now but closed, all came necessarily 
to the mode of regarding this life, to the subjective con- 
ception of the personality of Socrates, which, as is natu- 
ral to anticipate, would in various be variously reflected. 
Socrates had many scholars, but no school. There are 
three of these reflexes or types which have specially be- 
come historical. These are the Cynic, Cyrenaic, and 
Megaric schools, founded on the conceptions of Anti- 
sthenes, Aristippus, and Euclid respectively. Each of 
these three conceptions possesses a true moment of the 
Socratic character, but, separated from each other, they 
break asunder what in the master lay blended together 
in harmonious unity, and enunciate isolated elements of 
the Socratic character as the true nature of the whole. 
They are thus, all of them, one-sided, and give a false 
picture of Socrates, the blame of which, however, is not, 
in fact, specially theirs. They too are proofs — Aristippus 
being obliged to return to Protagoras, and Euclid to the 
Eleatics, the one for a theory of knowledge, and the 
other for a metaphysic — of the unfinished, unmethodic, 
subjective character of the Socratic philosophizing ; and 
in their own defects and one-sidednesses, they disclose in 
part only the original defects and weak points which 
clung to the teaching of their master. 

2. Antisthenes and the Cynics. — As strict literal ad- 
herent of the doctrine, and as zealous, nay coarse and often 
caricaturing, imitator of the manner, Antisthenes stands 
nearest his master. He was at one time a disciple of 
Gorgias, and himself a Sophistic teacher ; but he attached 



54 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

himself, apparently in advanced life, to Socrates, becom- 
ing his most inseparable .attendant; and, after his death, 
founded a school in the Cynosarges, a gymnasium in- 
tended for those who, like him, were not full-blooded 
Athenian citizens, whence (or, according to others, from 
their mode of life) his disciples and adherents received 
later the name of Cynics. The teaching of Antisthenes 
is only an abstract expression for the Socratic moral 
ideal. Like Socrates, he regarded a moral life as the 
ultimate end of mankind, as necessary, nay as alone suf- 
ficient for happiness ; and, like Socrates too, he held 
virtue to be knowable, teachable, and one. But the 
ideal of virtue, as it is before him in the person of So- 
crates, consists for him only in freedom from desires (in 
his very exterior he imitated the beggar, carrying staff 
and wallet), and consequently in the neglect of all other 
spiritual interests. Virtue to him is only directed to the 
avoidance of evil, that is to say, of those desires and 
greeds which bind us to enjoyments, and it stands not in 
need, therefore, of any dialectical argumentation, but 
only of Socratic strength. The wise man is to him suf- 
ficient for himself, independent of all, indifferent to mar- 
riage, family, and State (a quite unancient characteristic), 
as also to riches, honour, and enjoyment. In this rather 
negative than positive ideal of Antisthenes, we com- 
pletely miss the fine humanity and universal openness of 
the master, and still more any turning to advantage of 
the fertile dialectical elements which lay in the Socratic 
philosophizing. Cynicism, as was natural, took on later 
a more decided disregard of all knowledge, a yet greater 
contempt for public propriety, and became often a dis- 
gusting and shameless caricature of the spirit of Socrates. 
Such, particularly, was Diogene* of Sinope, the only 
disciple that persisted in remaining by his master, when 
Antisthenes drove all the others away from him. These 
Cynics, who have been happily called the Capuchins of 
the Greek world, retained, in their high estimation of 
virtue and philosophy, let us say, a memory of their 
original ; but they sought virtue, according to their own 
expression, * by the shortest way/ in a life according to 
nature, that is, in seclusion to self, in complete indepen- 
dency and freedom from desire, in renunciation of art 
and science, and of every definite end in general. The 
wise man, they said, is master over all his wants and de- 
sires, without weakness, free from the fetters of societary 



THE INCOMPLETE SOCBATICS: 55 

law and societary custom, — the peer of the gods. An easy 
life, Diogenes averred, is assigned by the gods to him who 
restricts himself to what is necessary, and this true 
philosophy is attainable by every one through endurance 
and the power of renunciation. Philosophy and philoso- 
phical interest alike vanish in the case of such beggar- 
philosophy ; what we have from Diogenes are but anec- 
dotes and sarcasms. 

We see, then, that the ethics of the Cynic school be- 
came lost in thoroughly negative and preventative pre- 
scripts, a legitimate result of the original defect of a 
concrete positive context and systematic completion on 
the part of the Socratic theory of morals. Cynicism is 
the negative side of Socraticism. 

3. Aristippus and the Cyrenaics. — Aristippus of 
Cyrene, up to the death of Socrates considered one of his 
adherents, but styled a Sophist by Aristotle — this probably 
because he took money for his lessons— appears in Xeno- 
phon as a man devoted to pleasure. The practical address 
with which he could adapt himself to circumstances, and 
the knowledge of mankind, by which he was enabled to 
procure himself under all relations the enjoyments of good 
living and luxury, were well known to the ancients. In 
his intercourse with courtesans and courtiers, at a dis- 
tance from political cares in order not to be dependent, 
and mostly in foreign countries in order to be able to 
withdraw himself from all clogs of connexion, he endea- 
voured to realize his maxim of conforming circumstances 
to self, not self to circumstances. However little such 
a man appears to merit the name of a Socratic, he pos- 
sesses nevertheless two points of contact with his master 
which are not to be overlooked. Socrates had pro- 
nounced virtue and felicity as co-ordinately the highest 
human end. That is to say, he had given the highest 
authority to the idea of moral action ; but, stating it 
only in an undeveloped abstract form, he had been un- 
able to find any other foundation for the obligatoriness 
of the moral law in any concrete case, than a eudaemo- 
nistic one, through reflection on the advantages of mora- 
lity. This side now it was that Aristippus held fast and 
raised into a principle per se ; pronouncing pleasure to be 
the ultimate aim of life, the supreme good. But now, 
this pleasure, as Aristippus understands it, is only the 
special, present, bodily sensation of pleasure, not happi- 
ness as a condition that comprehends the entire life ; and 



56 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

consequently, according to him, all moral limitations 
and obligations are, as against this pleasure, of no account. 
Nothing is wicked, shameful, godless, if it procures plea- 
sure ; what denies this is mere opinion and prejudice (as 
with the Sophists). But when Aristippus, as means for 
the attainment and preservation of enjoyment, recom- 
mends judgment, self-control, and moderation, the 
power to resist the mastery of any special desire, and in 
general the cultivation of the mind, he demonstrates that 
the spirit of Socrates is not wholly extinct in him, and 
that he deserves the name of a ^se^do-Socratic, which 
Schleiermacher gives him, not without further consi- 
deration. 

The remaining members of the Cyrenaic school, Theo- 
dor us, Hegesias, Anniceris, we can only briefly notice. 
The further development of the school hinges wholly on 
the more particular definition of the pleasure to be 
aimed at ; that is to say, on the question, whether it is 
to be understood as sensation of the moment or condi- 
tion to last, as spiritual or bodily, as positive or negative 
(that is, mere absence of pain). Theodorus declared for 
the supremacy of that mental joy which arises from 
judgment, and from the ability, in all relations of life, 
to direct one's-self in perception of a rational purpose, 
and in freedom from all the bonds of prejudice and 
superstition. Hegesias found a pure life of pleasure 
unattainable, and, therefore, not to be sought. Pre- 
vention of pain, with exertion of every faculty, was, 
according to him, the aim of the sage, and the only one 
that was left us, for life was full of evils. Lastly, 
Anniceris taught that withdrawal from family and so- 
ciety is incapable of being realized, that the true aim 
rather is to get from life as much enjoyment as can be 
got, and as for the occasional bitter that arises in the 
course of our efforts for friends and country, to take it 
too into the bargain ; that is, he endeavoured to recon- 
cile again the principle of pleasure with those demands 
of life and circumstances, to which it stood in such ir- 
reconcilable antagonism. 

4. Ecjclid and the Megarics. — Combination of dia- 
lectical with ethical elements is the character of all the 
imperfect Socratic schools : the distinction is only this, 
that here ethics subserve dialectics, there dialectics 
ethics. The former is particularly the case with the 
Megaric school, whose special peculiarity was designated 



THE INCOMPLETE SOCRATICS. 57 

by the ancients as a combination of the Socratic and 
Eleatic principles. The idea of the good is the same 
thing ethically as that of being physically. It was only 
a Socratic transformation of the Eleatic doctrine, then, 
when Euclid of Megara maintained that only that which 
is beent, self-identical, and one with itself, is good (true 
in itself), and that only this good is, while all change, 
plurality, dividedness, that is opposed to this good, is 
only apparent. This self -identical good, however, is not 
sensuous but intellectual being, truth, reason, which for 
man also is the only good. The only end, as Stilpo of 
the same school taught later, is reason and knowledge, 
with perfectly apathetic indifference to all that has no- 
thing in common with knowledge of the good. This 
plainly is but a one-sided exaggeration of the tendency of 
Socrates towards a thinking consideration of things, with 
concomitant peace of mind, and is only a finer, more in- 
tellectual Cynicism. 

Any further information about Euclid is meagre, and 
cannot be more particularly prosecuted here. The Me- 
garic school, under various leaders, continued to propa- 
gate itself for some time, but without living force, and 
without any independent principle of organic develop- 
ment. The later Megaric Eristic, indeed, constitutes the 
transition to Scepticism, as Cynicism led to Stoicism, 
and the Hedonism of the Cyrenaics to the Creed of Epi- 
curus. Their sophisms and paralogisms, for the most 
part polemically directed in the manner of Zeno against 
sensuous opinion and experience, were familiar to the 
ancients, and much spoken of. 

5. Plato as the completed Socratic. — The attempts 
which we have seen hitherto to build further on the 
the main pillars of the Socratic doctrine, being from the 
very beginning without any thriving germ of life, ended 
fruitless, resultless. The complete Socrates was under- 
stood and represented by only one of his disciples, Plato. 
Proceeding from the Socratic idea of knowledge, he col- 
lected into a single focus all the elements and raj r s of 
truth which lay scattered, not only in his master, but 
in the philosophers before him, and made of philosophy 
a whole, a system. That thought is the true being, and 
alone real, this proposition was understood by the Me- 
garic school only abstractly, and by Socrates only as prin- 
ciple. The latter, indeed, proposed cognition by means 
of universal notions only as a postulate, and gave it no 



58 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

further development. His philosophizing is not a system, 
but only seed and germ of logical analysis and philoso- 
phical method. Systematic exposition and analysis of 
the absolutely valid notions, of the world of ideas, this 
was left for Plato. 

The Platonic system is the objectivized Socrates, the 
conciliation and fusion of all previous philosophy. 



XIV.— Plato. 

PLATO'S Life. — (a.) His youth. — Plato, the son of 
Ariston, and descendant of a noble Attic family, was 
born in the year 429 B.C., the year in which Pericles died, 
the second year of the Peloponnesian war, a year so unfor- 
tunate for the Athenians. Born thus in the centre of Gre- 
cian culture, and son of an ancient and noble house, he 
received an education befitting his circumstances, although 
with the exception of the useless names of his teachers, we 
possess no information on the history of his earliest instruc- 
tion. That the growing youth preferred the seclusion of 
philosophy to the career of politics may seem strange, see- 
ing that he must have had, we should think, many induce- 
ments to the latter. Critias, for example, one of the 
Thirty, was the cousin of his mother, while his uncle was 
Charmides who subsequently met his death on the same 
day with Critias, fighting on the side of the oligarchical 
tyrants of Athens against Thrasybulus. Nevertheless, 
he never once publicly appeared as a speaker in the 
assembly of the people. In view of the commencing de- 
generation and extending corruption of his country, too 
proud to court the favour of the many-headed rabble, 
more inclined, upon the whole, to Dorism than to De- 
mocracy and Athenian political life as it was, he pre- 
ferred to make science his occupation, rather than fall, 
vainly fighting as a patriot with inevitable misfortune, a 
martyr to his convictions. The Athenian State he con- 
sidered lost ; and he thought it useless to bring another 
sacrifice to its unavoidable ruin. (&.) His spiritual ap- 
prenticeship. — Plato was twenty years of age when he 
first attended Socrates, and he passed eight years in his 
society. Except some anecdotes unworthy of credence, 
we possess no particulars in regard to this period. There 
is only a passing mention of Plato in the Memorabilia of 
Xenophon (ni. 6) ; it is sufficient to indicate, however, a 



PLATO. 59 

greater than usual intimacy between the disciple and his 
master. Plato himself, in the dialogues, reveals nothing 
of his personal relations to Socrates, only once (Phced. 
p. 59) does he even name himself among the more par- 
ticular friends of Socrates. But what influence he re- 
ceived from Socrates, how he recognised in him the 
perfected portrait of a wise man, how he found not only 
in his teaching but in his life and actions the fruitfullest 
philosophical germs and hints, what significance in gene- 
ral the personality of his master in its authority as 
exemplar had for him — this he has sufficiently demon- 
strated in his writings, by putting his own far more de- 
veloped philosophical system into the mouth of his 
teacher as the centre of the dialogues, and the arbiter of 
the conversation, (c.) His travels. — After the death of 
Socrates (399 B.C.), fearing to be involved in the reaction 
that had now set in against philosophy, Plato, in the 
thirtieth year of his age, quitted, with other friends of 
Socrates, his native city, and took up his abode at Me- 
gara, with his former fellow-disciple, Euclid, the founder 
of the Megaric school (compare xin. 4). Hitherto a 
pure disciple of Socrates, he became now, in consequence 
of intercourse with the Megarics, among whom a peculiar 
philosophical direction, a modification of the teaching 
of Socrates, had already declared itself, infinitely stimu- 
lated and enriched. We shall see again how far this 
sojourn at Megara was of influence in the formation of 
his philosophy, especially in the dialectic founding and 
completing of his ideas. An entire period of his literary 
activity, an entire group of his dialogues, finds satisfactory 
explanation only in the spiritual impulses he had received 
here. From Megara Plato travelled to Cyrene, Egypt, 
Magna Gragcia, and Sicily. In Magna Graecia he was intro- 
duced into the Pythagorean philosophy, which was then 
at its perfection. His stay among the Pythagoreans was 
very important for him : as man he gained in practical 
discernment, in interest in life, and in a regard for public 
concerns, and the affairs of society ; as philosopher, in 
scientific stimulus and literary motive. Traces of Pytha- 
gorean philosophy run throughout the entire series of his 
latest literary productions. In especial, his dislike to 
public and political life seems to have been much modi- 
fied by his intercourse with the Pythagoreans. Whilst 
the Thecetetus still signalizes in the directest manner 
the incompatibility of philosophy with public life, 



60 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the later dialogues, especially the Republic, and even the 
Statesman in which the Pythagorean influence appears 
already begun, return by preference to reality again; 
and the familiar proposition, Rulers ought to be philo- 
sophers, is a very characteristic expression for this 
later modification in the philosophical mood of Plato. 
His visit to Sicily led to his acquaintance as well with 
the elder Dionysius, as with Dion, his brother-in-law. 
The ways of the philosopher, it is true, agreed ill with 
those of the tyrant. Plato is said to have attracted his 
displeasure to such a degree that his life was in danger. 
After nearly ten years of travelling, Plato, in his fortieth 
year (388 or 389), returned to Athens, (d.) Plato as head 
of the academy : the period of mastership (that is, after 
his Lehrjahre and Wanderjahre, we have now his Meis- 
terjahre). — After his return, Plato soon drew around him 
a circle of disciples. The place in which he taught was 
the Academy, a gymnasium outside Athens, where he 
possessed a garden belonging to his inheritance from his 
father. Of information in regard to the external history 
of his school and later life, we have scarcely any. His life 
passed smoothly, interrupted only by two other voyages 
to Sicily, where meanwhile the younger Dionysius had 
attained sovereignty. This second and third sojourn at 
the Syracusan court are pregnant with events and vicissi- 
tudes ; they show us the philosopher in the most multi- 
form positions and circumstances, as described by Plutarch 
in the life of Dion. For his philosophical character, 
however, these voyages are only so far important, as, 
according to all probability, Plato availed himself of the 
opportunities they offered for putting his political theory 
into practice. To that end he endeavoured to realize in 
Sicily his ideal of the State, and, by a philosophical 
education of the new ruler, to unite philosophy and 
government in one and the same hand, or at least, in 
some manner or other, by means of philosophy, to effect 
a wholesome reform of the Sicilian constitution in an 
aristocratic direction. His efforts were fruitless; cir- 
cumstances were unfavourable, and the character of the 
young Dionysius, * one of those mediocre natures which 
in their halfness aspire to fame and distinction, but are 
incapable of any depth or of any earnestness,' disap- 
pointed the expectations which Plato, on the report of 
Dion, had believed himself warranted to entertain of him. 
As concerns Plato's philosophical activity in the academy 



PLATO. 61 

we are struck at once by the change it manifests in the 
position of philosophy to public life. Instead of making 
philosophy, like Socrates, an object of social conversation 
and of ordinary intercourse, instead of entering into 
philosophical discourse in the streets and other public 
places with every one who was that way inclined, he 
lived and worked in retirement from the business of the 
outside world, confined to the circle of his disciples. In 
proportion as philosophy grows now into a system, and 
systematic form comes to be considered essential, philo- 
sophy itself ceases to be popular, begins to demand a 
scientific preparatory knowledge, and to become an affair 
of the school, a something esoteric. The reverence of 
the name of philosopher, and especially of Plato's, was 
still so great, however, that, as is related, the proposal 
was made to him by various States to frame for them a 
code of laws ; and he is said to have actually done this 
in several instances. Surrounded by a crowd of true 
disciples, even women among them in the attire of men, 
the object of unbounded homage, up to the last moment 
in possession of undiminished mental power, he reached 
the advanced age of eighty-one years. The latest period 
of his life appears to have been troubled by certain dif- 
ferences and divisions in the school, for which Aristotle 
is particularly named as responsible. While engaged 
writing, or, according to others, at a marriage-feast, he 
was overtaken by death as by a gentle slumber in the 
year 347 B.C. His remains were laid in the Ceramicus, 
not far from the Academy. 

2. History of the Inner Development of the Writ- 
ings and Philosophy of Plato. — That the Platonic 
philosophy is essentially an historical development, that it 
is not to be conceived as completed at once in the form of 
an individual system, to which a variety of writings are 
as supplementary fragments, but that the several writings 
are rather stages of evolution, as it were stations passed 
and left behind in the intellectual progress of the philo- 
sopher — this is an extremely important point of view for 
the correct understanding of the Platonic writings. 

The philosophical and literary activity of Plato falls 
into three periods, which may be variously designated. 
In reference to chronology or biography, they are the 
periods of apprenticeship, travel, and mastership (or of 
Lehrjahre, Wanderjahre, and Meisterjahre as already 
named). In reference again to the dominant outer influ- 



62 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ence and points of junction respectively present in each, 
these periods are the Socratic, the Heraclitico-Eleatic, and 
the Pythagorean. In reference lastly to their subject- 
matter, they are respectively the antisophistico- ethical, 
the dialectical or conciliative, and the systematic or con- 
structive periods. 

The first period, the Socratic, is characterized exter- 
nally by the predominance of a certain imitative dramatic 
element, and internally in relation to the philosophical 
stand-point, by the adoption of the method and chief 
matter of Socrates. Not yet acquainted with the results 
of the older inquiries, and, from the Socratic point of 
view, rather repelled than attracted by the study of the 
history of philosophy, Plato restricts himself as yet to 
analytic treatment of the notions, especially the ethical 
ones, and to such an imitation of his master as is still 
philosophically incomplete, though certainly beyond any 
mere repetition of what had been got verbally by rote. 
His Socrates betrays not any other view of life or philo- 
sophical attainment than the historical Socrates of Xeno- 
phon has possessed. His efforts too, like those of his 
contemporary fellow- disciples, are directed principally to 
practical wisdom, while his polemic, like that of Socrates, 
concerns the want of scientific knowledge prevalent in 
life, the Sophistical superficiality and defect of principle, 
infinitely more than the antagonistic tendencies of philo- 
sophy. The whole period displays still an eclectic and 
protreptic character. The highest point in which the 
dialogues of this group culminate, is the desire, still 
thoroughly Socratic indeed, to establish the certainty of 
absolute principles, the existence in and for itself (the 
objective reality) of the good. 

Plato's historical development, certainly, would take 
on quite another character, were the views of some later 
inquirers in reference to the place of the Phcedrus to be 
considered right. If the Phcedrus, namely, were Plato's 
first work, this circumstance would from the beginning 
bespeak for Plato quite another course of culture than 
could possibly be anticipated on the part of a simple dis- 
ciple of Socrates. The allusions in this dialogue to the 
pre-existence of the soul and its periodical migrations, to 
the affinity of earthly to heavenly truth, to divine inspi- 
ration as in contrast to human reflection, the erotic 
notion, the Pythagorean ingredients, — all this is so dis- 
crepant from the original considerations of Socrates, that 



PLATO. 63 

it would require us to place in the very beginning of his 
philosophical development the greatest part of what 
Plato had creatively struck out only in the course of his 
entire career. This improbability itself, and, still more, 
numerous other objections, pronounce for a much later 
composition of this dialogue. The Phcedrus being set 
aside, the history of Plato's development runs pretty well 
thus : — 

The short dialogues, which treat in a Socratic manner 
Socratic theories and questions are (those of them that 
are genuine) the earliest. The Charmides, for example, 
discusses temperance, the Lysis friendship, the Laches 
fortitude, Hippias minor voluntary and intentional wrong- 
doing, the first Alcibiades the moral and intellectual 
requisites of a statesman, etc. The youthfulness and im- 
maturity of these dialogues, the disproportionate expen- 
diture of scenic display as compared with the matter in 
them, the scantiness and feebleness of this matter, the 
indirect manner of the inquiry, that ends not in any posi- 
tive result, the formal analytic handling of the discussed 
notions, — all this vouches for the early or maiden 
character of these lesser dialogues. 

As special type of the Socratic period, the Protagoras 
may be taken. In this dialogue, when Plato directs his 
entire polemic against the Sophists, and concerns himself 
more especially with their external procedure, their con- 
temporary influence, and their peculiar method as op- 
posed to that of Socrates, without entering more deeply 
into the grounds and character of their philosophy itself, 
when further, occupied now with what is philosophical 
in the stricter sense, he exclusively discusses, and in the 
manner of indirect inquiry, the Socratic idea of virtue in 
its various aspects, as knowledge, as one, and as teach- 
able (compare xii. 7), — there are exhibited to us, and in 
the clearest fashion, the tendency, character, and defects 
of the first period. 

The third and highest stage of this period (the Prota~ 
goras standing for the second), is represented by the 
Gorgias, written shortly after the death of Socrates. 
Directed against the Sophistical identification of virtue 
and pleasure, of the good and the agreeable, or, what 
is the same thing, against the affirmation of an absolute 
moral relativity, this dialogue proves that the good, far 
from owing its origin only to the right of the stronger, 
and so only to the caprice of the subject, is something 



64 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

existent in and for itself, objectively valid, and conse- 
quently alone veritably useful, and that, therefore, the 
standard of pleasure must give place to the higher 
standard of the good. It is in this direct thetical po- 
lemic against the Sophistic principle of pleasure, this 
tendency towards something fixed, permanent, and 
secure against subjective self-will, that the superiority 
of the Gorgias to the Protagoras principally consists. 

In the first or Socratic period, the Platonic philoso- 
phizing became ripe and ready for the reception of Eleatic 
and Pythagorean categories. With help of these catego- 
ries, to struggle up to the higher questions of philosophy, 
and so to free the philosophy of Socrates from its involu- 
tion with practical life, — this was the. task of the second 
period. 

The second period, the dialectic or Megaric, is 
characterized externally by a retrocession of the form 
and poetic animation, not unfrequently by obscurity and 
stylistic difficulties ; while inwardly it is characterized by 
the dialectical formation of the ideal theory, in concilia- 
tion and amalgamation with the thought of the Eleatics. 

Plato was brought into relation, through his journey to 
Megara, with opponents, through his voyage to Italy, 
with other philosophical tendencies, with whom and with 
which he was bound to come to an understanding before 
being able to raise the principle of Socrates into its true 
significance. It was thus he was led to acquire the philo- 
sophical theories of the older thinkers, for the study of 
which, in view of the absence at that time of any literary 
publicity, the requisite appliances were not yet in exist- 
ence at Athens. By means of a settlement with these 
different positions, such as had already been attempted 
by his elder fellow-disciples, he sought, transcending the 
narrow limits of mere ethical inquiry, to penetrate into 
the ultimate grounds of knowledge, and perfect the So- 
cratic art of universalization into a science of it, into the 
theory of the ideas. That all human action depended on 
knowledge, and that all knowledge depended on its uni- 
versal or notion, to these results Plato was already able 
to advance by a scientific generalization of the Socratic 
doctrine. But to introduce now this Socratic cognition 
through notions into the circle of speculative thought, to 
establish the notional unities dialectically as the element 
of permanence in the vicissitude of the phenomenal, to 
discover the foundations of knowledge, which, so to speak, 



PLATO. 65 

had only been turned by Socrates, to grasp the theories 
of opponents direct in their scientific grounds, and follow 
them up iDto their ultimate roots, — this is the problem 
which the Megaric dialogues set themselves to resolve. 

At the head of this group stands the Thecetetus. Its 
main contents are a polemic against the Protagorean 
theory of cognition, against the identification of thought 
and sensuous perception, or against the assumption of an 
absolute relativity of all knowledge. As the Gorgias, 
before it, sought to ascertain and establish the absolute 
principle of ethical ideas, so now the Thecetetus, ascend- 
ing from practice to theory, seeks to ascertain and estab- 
lish the absolute principle of logical ideas, of those ideas 
which underlie all perception and all thought, — in a 
word, it seeks to ascertain and establish the objectivity 
of truth, a realm of knowledge that is independent of 
sensuous perception, that is immanent to thought. Such 
ideas are to him the universal notions, likeness, unlike- 
ness, identity, difference, etc. 

The Theo&tetus is followed by the trilogy of the So- 
phist, the Statesman, and the Philosopher, with which 
the Megaric group is completed. The object of the first 
of these dialogues is to investigate the notion of show 
(Schein, appearance), that is to say, of non-being ; that 
of the last, — represented by the Parmenides, — the notion 
of being ; and both are explanations come to with the 
views of the Eleatics. Plato, indeed, after having come 
to recognise the universal notions and the logical categories 
as what is permanent in the outward mutability, could 
not fail to have his attention awakened to the Eleatics, 
who by an opposite path had reached the same result, — 
that in unity, namely, lies all true substantiality, and that 
to plurality, as such, there can attach no true being. De* 
veloping this leading thought of the Eleatics into its con- 
sequences, in which the Megarics had already preceded 
him, it would necessarily be all the easier for him to 
advance to the elevation of his abstract universal notions 
(ideas), into metaphysical substances. On the other hand, 
it would be impossible for him, unless he were prepared 
entirely to surrender the plurality of existence, to be 
satisfied with the immobility and exclusiveness of the 
Eleatic one, and he would be obliged rather, by means of a 
dialectical development of the Eleatic principle, to attempt 
to show that the one must at the same time be an organ- 
ized and co-articulated whole that included the plurality 




66 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

within its own unity. The Sophist, in demonstrating the 
existence of show or of non-being (that is to say, the 
plurality of the ideas, and their nature to possess specific 
quality each only in a mutual contrast of pairs that are 
counterparts, results due to the presence of negation), dis- 
cusses this double relation to the Eleatic principle polemi- 
cally as against the latter. The Parmenides again — 
in demonstrating the Eleatic one, by virtue of its own 
logical consequence, to strike round into its reverse, and 
undergo diremption into plurality — effects the same ob- 
ject irenically. The internal progress of the ideal theory 
in the Megaric group is therefore this, that the Thecete- 
tus makes good, as against the Heraclitico-Protagorean 
doctrine of an absolute becoming, the permanent, objec- 
tive reality of the ideas ; the Sophist again their recipro- 
cal relation and susceptibility of combination ; and the 
Parmenides finally their entire dialectic complex, their 
relation to the phenomenal world, and their self -concilia-, 
tion (fusion) with the latter. 

The third period begins with the return of the philoso- 
pher to his native country. It unites the perfection of 
form of the first with the deeper philosophical substance 
of the second. The memories of his young years appear 
at that time to have arisen anew before the soul of Plato, 
and to have again imparted to his literary faculty its long- 
unwonted freshness and fulness, whilst at the same time 
his experience of foreign countries, and his acquaintance in 
particular with the Pythagorean philosophy, had enriched 
his mind with a wealth of images and ideals. This re- 
vival of old memories announces itself specially in this, 
that the writings of this group return with preference 
and love to the personality of Socrates, and manifest the 
entire Platonic philosophy to be in a measure, but a 
glorifying of the Socratic theory, but an exaltation of 
the historical Socrates into the idea. In contrast to the 
two former periods, the third is characterized externally, 
hand in hand with the growing influence of Pythagorean- 
ism, by an increasing predominance of the mythic form, 
and internally, in speculative reference, by the application 
of the ideas to the concrete spheres of psychology, ethics, * 
and natural science. That the ideas are objective reali- 
ties, the seat of all substantiality and truth, as conversely 
that the phenomena of sense are copies of these, — this 
theory is now no longer argued, but is assumed as proved, 
and is made principle or dialectical basis of the discus- 



PL A TO. 67 

sion of the real disciplines. Combined with this is the 
tendency to conjoin into the totality of a system the 
separate disciplines hitherto divided, as well as inwardly 
to fuse together all the previous principles of philosophy, 
that is, the ethical of Socrates, the dialectical of the 
Eleatics, and the physical of the Pythagoreans. 

Thus the Phcedrus, which is Plato's inaugural pro- 
gramme on opening of his Academic career, and the 
Banquet, which is connected with it, attempt — both 
starting from the erotic notion as the veritable philoso- 
phical germ— to subject the rhetorical theory and prac- 
tice of the time to a critique on principles, in order to 
show, in contrast to both, that only exclusive devotion to 
the idea, the true Eros, affords that understood and 
settled stability of a scientific principle which is alone in 
a condition to secure us from subjectivity, absence of 
principle, and crudeness. Thus, too, the remaining 
greater works are but similar attempts, as the Phado, to 
found the immortality of the soul on the ideal theory, the 
Philebus to apply the highest categories of the system to 
the notions of pleasure and the supreme good, and finally 
the closing and consummating works of the Republic and 
the Timo3us to determine the true character of the state 
and of nature, of the physical and the spiritual universe. 

Having thus delineated the history of the inner deve- 
lopment of the Platonic philosophy, we turn now to its 
systematic exposition. 

3. Division of the Platonic System. — Plato himself 
having given us no systematic exposition of his philosophy, 
no classifying principle realized in actual application, 
but only the history of his thought, or only the exposi- 
tion of his philosophical development, we find ourselves 
reduced here to mere hints. From these, various pro- 
posals have resulted, as now a division of the Platonic 
system into theoretical and practical sciences, and again 
into philosophies of the beautiful, the good, and the true. 
Better than these, perhaps, is another division, which 
has some support in certain ancient intimations. Some 
of the ancients say, namely, that Plato first collected 
the various parts of philosophy from their dispersion 
among the earlier philosophers, and so obtained three 
parts of philosophy, — logic, physics, ethics. The exacter 
statement is certainly that of Sextus Empiricus, that 
Plato virtually employed this classification, but had not 
definitely expressed it; it is only his disciples Xenocrates 



68 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and Aristotle who shall have expressly recognised this 
distribution. The Platonic system is at least suscep- 
tible of being, without violence, arranged into the three 
parts named. Several dialogues there are, it is true, 
which combine together, some more and some less, all 
three at once, — logic, ethics, and physics. Nay, even in 
those in which Plato is occupied with special disci- 
plines, we find always the one flowing into the other, 
physics issuing in ethics, ethics returning to physics, and 
dialectic finally pervading the whole. Still, particular 
dialogues there undoubtedly are, in which this ground- 
plan can be distinctly recognised. That the Timceus is 
predominatingly physical, as the Republic is predominat- 
ingly ethical, admits not of a doubt. And if dialectic is 
exclusively represented in no single dialogue, the Megaric 
group at least, which closes in the Parmenides, and 
which constitutes, even according to the external in- 
timation of Plato, a connected tetralogy, pursues the 
common purpose of an exposition as well of science as 
of its object (being), and is in its matter, therefore, de- 
cidedly dialectical. Seeing, then, that Plato must, by the 
very course of previous philosophy, have been naturally 
led to this tripartite division, that Xenocrates is not 
likely to have invented it, and that Aristotle assumes it 
as universally known, we cannot hesitate to adopt it as 
ground-plan in an exposition of the Platonic system. 

We have no clearer declaration in Plato in regard 
to the order of the parts either. The first place belongs 
evidently, however, to dialectic, as the foundation of 
all philosophy ; and Plato himself, while he gives the 
general prescript (Phced. p. 99, and Phcedr. p. 237), to 
begin in every philosophical investigation with the de- 
termination of the idea, does afterwards actually discuss 
all the concrete spheres of science from the point of view 
of the ideal theory. The position of the other two parts 
would seem still more doubtful. As, however, physics 
culminate in ethics, while, conversely, ethics, in the in- 
quiry into the animating principle (soul) of nature, have 
physics for foundation, the latter will necessarily precede 
the former. 

From philosophy the mathematical sciences have been 
expressly excluded by Plato. He considers them, in- 
deed, as educational means for philosophical thought 
{Rep. vii. 526), as a necessary step in knowledge, with- 
out which no one can ever attain to philosophy 



PLATO. 69 

(Ibid. VI. 510) ; but still to him mathematics is not philo- 
sophy, for the former presupposes the principles of the 
latter, as if they were already known to all, and without 
giving any account of them, — a mode of procedure which, 
in pure science, is inadmissible ; mathematics, too, has 
recourse in its proofs to visible pictures, although it is not 
of these that it treats, but of what is seen by the under- 
standing alone (Ibid.) It stands then to him in the 
middle between correct opinion and pure science, clearer 
than the one, obscurer than the other (Ibid. vn. 533). 

4. The Platonic Dialectic. — (a.) Idea of dialectic. — 
Dialectic or logic has been used by the ancients mostly in 
a very wide sense, by Plato frequently as interchangeable 
with philosophy. Nevertheless he treats it at other times 
as only a branch of philosophy. He separates it as science 
of the eternal and immutable from physics as science of 
the mutable, of what never is, but always only becomes. 
He separates it also from ethics, so far as the latter con- 
sider not the good in and for itself, but only in its con- 
crete application in morals and the state. Dialectic is still 
thus, in a measure, philosophy in the more eminent sense 
of the word, whilst physics and ethics add themselves to 
it as two less exact sciences, as it were as not yet of the 
nature of completed philosophy. Plato expressly defines 
dialectic in the usual sense of the word, as the art of 
developing knowledge conversationally by question and 
answer (Rep. vn. 534). But the art of correct commu- 
nication in conversation being at the same time to Plato 
the art also of correct thought, as indeed the ancients 
generally could not separate thought and speech, and 
every process of thought was for them a living discourse, 
we find him also defining dialectic as the science of duly 
conducting discourse, and duly joining or disjoining the 
genera of things, the universal notions (Soph. p. 253 ; 
Phaidr. p. 266). Dialectic is for him twofold then, to 
know what can be joined, what not ; and to know how 
to divide, how to combine. If along with this latter de- 
finition we consider that, for Plato, the universal notions, 
the ideas, are alone what is veritably actual, veritably 
beent, we shall find a third definition, which also not un- 
frequently appears in Plato (particularly Phileb. p. 57), and 
is not by any means discrepant, this, namely, that dialectic 
is the science of the beent, of the veritable, of the ever- 
lasting self-identical, — in a word, that it is the science of 
all the other sciences. So conceived, it may be briefly 



70 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

designated as the science of what absolutely is, or of 
the ideas. 

{h.) What is science? (aa.) In contradistinction to sen- 
sation and sensuous conception. — The discussion of this 
question, as against the sensualism of Protagoras, is the 
business of the Theatetus. Protagoras said, namely, 
that all knowledge is perception, and that both are one 
and the same. From this it followed — consequences 
which Protagoras himself drew — that the things are as 
they appear to me to be, that perception or sensation is 
infallible. But as again perception and sensation are 
with countless people countlessly diverse, as even in the 
case of one and the same individual they are extremely 
variable, it follows further, that there are no objective 
assignments or predicates whatever, that we can never 
say what anything is in itself, that all notions, big, little, 
light, heavy, more, less, have only a relative signification, 
and that consequently the universals likewise, as them- 
selves but reductions of the changeful many, are devoid 
of all permanence and consistence. In opposition to this 
Protagorean thesis, Plato calls attention to the following 
contradictions and counter-instances : — Firstly, The Pro- 
tagorean proposition leads to the most startling conse- 
quences. Being and seeming, knowledge and perception 
namely, being one and the same, then any irrational 
brute that is capable of perception is equally the measure 
of all things ; and instinctive sentiment, as the expression 
of my subjective experience, of my condition for the 
moment, being infallible, then there is no longer possible 
any instruction, any scientific discussion, any debate, or 
any refutation. Secondly, The Protagorean proposition is 
a logical contradiction. For according to it Protagoras 
must call right whoever calls him wrong ; since indeed, 
as is maintained by himself, nobody perceives or feels 
incorrectly, but, on the contrary, everybody quite correctly. 
The pretended truth of Protagoras, therefore, is true for 
nobody, not even for himself. Thirdly, Protagoras anni- 
hilates all knowledge of the future. What / hold to be 
useful, namely, does not on that account necessarily prove 
itself such in result. For, as what is useful always refers 
to the future, and as men, taken individually, do not pos- 
sess in themselves any necessary standard for estimating 
the future, but one man more, another less, the infer- 
ence is clear, that it is not man simpliciter, but only the 
wise man that can be regarded as a criterion. Fourthly, 



PLATO. 71 

The theory of Protagoras demolishes perception itself. 
Perception according to him depends on a. for one another 
(a reciprocity, a synthesis) of perceived object and per- 
ceiving subject, and is the common product of both. 
But the objects, in his view also, are in such uninterrupted 
flux and motion, that it is impossible to fix them whether 
in seeing or in hearing. This absolute mutability ren- 
ders ,all knowledge of sense, and, consequently, all know- 
ledge in general — both being identical to Protagoras — 
impossible. Fifthly, Protagoras knows not the a priori 
element of knowledge. It results from an analysis of 
sensuous perception, that not the whole sum involved in 
any one act of perception is produced or introduced by 
the action of the senses, but rather that, besides this 
sensuous action, there are implied as well certain intel- 
lectual functions, and, consequently, an independent 
sphere of extra-sensuous knowledge. We see with the 
eyes and hear with the ears ; but, to conjoin these per- 
ceptions, thus acquired by means of different organs, 
and to embrace them in the unity of self- consciousness, — 
neither is this an affair of the senses. But further : we 
compare the various perceptions of sense with one an- 
other, and this is a function also which cannot be per- 
formed by the senses themselves, for it is impossible for 
us to receive through sight the perceptions of the ear, or 
conversely. Of the perceptions themselves finally, we 
affirm qualities, such as being and non-being, likeness 
and unlikeness, identity and difference, etc. , which plainly 
cannot be derived by means of sense itself. These quali- 
ties, to which belong also the good and the bad, beauty 
and the reverse, etc., constitute a peculiar sphere of 
knowledge, which the soul itself creates in independency 
of all perception of sense, and through its own spontaneous 
action. In other dialogues Plato introduces, in his polemic 
against sensualism, the ethical moment as well. W£~ 
must, he says (in the Soph. ), make better men of those wh& 
materialize all things, and who maintain what is tangible 
to be alone true, before they can become susceptible of 
knowledge. Then, however, they will see the truth of the 
soul, acknowledge justice and reason in it, and admit that 
these are real things, albeit neither tangible nor visible. 

(bb). Knowledge in relation to opinion. — Opinion (crude 
conception, feeling, instinctive conviction) is just as little 
identical with knowledge as perception of sense. Incor- 
rect opinion falls of itself to the ground ; but even cor- 



72 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

rect opinion cannot be maintained as truth proper, for 
(Thecetet.) it may be produced by the art of the orator 
without being legitimately describable as on that account 
true knowledge. Correct opinion, if materially true, is 
formally inadequate, and stands therefore in the middle be- 
tween knowledge and non-knowledge, participant of both. 
(cc.) Science in relation to thought. — As against the 
Protagorean sensualism, there has been already proved, 
on the part of the soul, and in independence of sensuous 
perception and sensation itself, a power of investigating 
the universal abstractedly, and of grasping in thought 
that which truly is. There are thus two sources of 
knowledge, on one side external sensation with inner in- 
stinctive opinion, and on the other rational thought. 
The former of these is employed on what is in constant 
process, in constant change, on what, as purely moment- 
ary, is in perpetual transition from the was through the 
now into the will be (Parm. p. 152) ; and is, consequently, 
a source of troubled, impure, and uncertain knowledge. 
Thought, on the contrary, is employed on the permanent, 
on that which neither begins nor ends, but always in like 
manner is (Tim. p. 51). There are two sorts of things, 
says the Timceus (p. 27, seq.) f one ' that always is, and be- 
comes not, and one that always becomes, and never is. 
The former, that, namely, which is always in the same 
state, is apprehended through reflection by means of 
reason ; the other, again, which comes to be and ceases 
to be, but properly never is, is apprehended through 
opinion by means of sensuous perception, and without 
reason.' True knowledge, therefore, comes only from the 
pure and wholly inner activity of the mind, freed from I 
j the body and all sensuous troublings and disturbances [I 
(Phced. p. 65). The soul in this state perceives things | 
in their purity, as they are (Phced. p. 66) in their eternal 
essence, in their own immutable nature. Hence it is 
that the desire of death, the longing to escape from the 
body as an obstacle to true knowledge, and to become 
pure spirit, is portrayed in the Phcedo (p. 64) as the true 
mood of a philosopher. Science, after all this, then, is 
the thought of the veritably beent, or of the ideas. Dia- 
lectic, as the art of joining and disjoining ideas, is the 
organ of their apprehension, the means of their discovery 
and recognition ; and, conversely, the ideas are the true 
object of dialectic. 

(c.) The ideal theory in its genesis. — The Platonic ideal 



PLATO. 73 

theory is the common product of the Socratic method of 
notional formation (universalization), of the Heraclitic 
principle of an absolute becoming, and of the Eleatic 
doctrine of an absolute being. Plato owes to the first 
the idea of notional knowledge, to the second the con- 
ception of the sensuous world as mere becoming, to the 
third the assumption of a sphere of absolute reality. 
Plato connects the ideal theory elsewhere (in the Philebus), 
with the Pythagorean thought that all consists of unity 
and plurality, of the limited and the unlimited. To come 
to an understanding with the principles of Heraclitus 
and the Eleatics is the object of the Thecetetus, the Sophist, 
and the Parmenides. This is accomplished in the Thece- 
tetus polemically against the principle of an absolute be- 
coming ; in the Sophist polemically against the principle 
of abstract being ; and in the Parmenides irenically in re- 
lation to the Eleatic one. Of the Thecetetus we have just 
spoken ; in the Sophist and Parmenides the progress of 
the ideal theory is constituted as follows : — 

The purpose of the dialogue so-named is ostensibly 
to demonstrate the Sophist as a caricature of the philo- 
sopher ; in truth, however, to establish the reality of 
mere show or of the non-beent; and speculatively to 
discuss, therefore, the relation of being and of non-being. 
The teaching of the Eleatics had ended in the rejection 
of all sensuous knowledge, and in the declaration of what 
we believe ourselves to percnre as regards a plurality of 
things, or a becoming, to be mere show. Here the contra- 
diction was plain, of directly denying non-being, and yet 
admitting its existence in human conception. Plato de- 
monstrates this contradiction at once, by explaining that 
any apparent knowledge which should furnish us with a 
false object or a false conception were impossible, if 
thought in general of the false, the untrue, the non- 
existent, were impossible. This, Plato continues, is pre- 
cisely the greatest difficulty in thinking non-being, that 
he who denies it is obliged quite as much as he who 
affirms it, to contradict himself. For although it is 
incapable of being expressed, or of being thought whether 
as one or as many, yet he who speaks of it is compelled 
to concede to it both characters. If we grant a false 
opinion to exist, we at least presuppose the conception of 
non-being ; for only that opinion can be named false that 
either declares the non-existent existent, or the existent 
non-existent. In short, if a false conception actually 



74 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

exists, a non-existent, in truth and actuality, also exists. 
Having established in this way the reality of non-being, 
Plato proceeds to discuss the relation of being and non- 
being, or the relation of notions in general, their capacity 
of combination, and their antithesis. If, namely, non- 
being has no less reality than being, and being no more 
than non-being, — if, for example, the not-large be as 
real as the large, then every notion may in the same 
way be expressed as the side of an antithesis, and 
recognised as at once beent and non-beent. It is beent 
in reference to itself, as what is identical with it- 
self ; it is non-beent in reference to each of the innu- 
merable other notions which may be referred to it, and 
with which it cannot enter into communion, as being 
different from them. The notions of the identical (tclvtSv) 
and the other (ddrepov), express the form of the antithe- 
sis in general : they are the universal formulas of com- 
bination for all notions. This reciprocal relation of 
notions, as at once beent and non-beent, by means of 
which they become arranged together, is the foundation 
of the art of dialectic, the business of which is to decide 
what notions shall be combined together, and what not. 
Plato shows by example of the notions being, motion ( = 
becoming), and rest (= quasi-fixed being, mortal state), 
what results from the combination of notions and their 
reciprocal exclusion of one another. Of the notions 
named, for instance, those of motion and of rest cannot 
be combined together, but, with the notion of being, 
either may. The notion of rest is, therefore, in refer- 
ence to itself, beent ; in reference to motion non-beent, 
or other. Thus, the ideal theory, its general establish- 
ment having been attempted in the Thecetetus, through 
demonstration of the objective reality of the ideas, is 
now, in the Sophist, developed into the doctrine of the 
community of notions, that is of their reciprocal subordi- 
nation and co-ordination. The category that conditions 
these reciprocal relations is the category of non-being, or 
the other. The fundamental thought of the Sophist, 
then, that neither is being without non-being, nor non- 
being without being, may, in modern phraseology, be 
expressed thus : negation is not non-being, but determi- 
nateness, and, conversely, all determinateness, and con- 
creteness of notions, all affirmativeness, is only through 
negation, through exclusion, contrariety; the notion of 
antithesis is the soul of the philosophical method. 



PLATO. 76 

As positive consequence, and as a further development 
of the Eleatic principle, we have now the ideal theory in 
the Parmenides. The burden of this dialogue being put 
into the mouth of Parmenides himself, the Platonic doc- 
trine is thus, even in its external form, presented as the 
special view of the Eleatic philosopher. No doubt, the 
leading thought here, namely, that the one is not think- 
• able without the many, nor the many without the one, 
but that both necessarily presuppose and mutually con- 
dition e&ch other, stands in direct contradiction to the 
Eleatic doctrine. Still, Parmenides, in attempting to 
discuss and explain, in the first part of his poem, the one, 
and in the second (though according to his own protesta- 
tion only in deference to erroneous opinion), the world of 
the many, had himself, in a certain way, postulated an 
inner conciliation between these seemingly incoherent 
parts of his system ; and to that extent, therefore, the 
Platonic ideal theory is justified in giving itself out 
as a further development, and as the true sense of 
the Parmenidean philosophy. This dialectical concilia- 
tion between the one and the many, Plato attempts in 
four antinomies, which ostensibly have only a negative 
result, so far as they demonstrate, that on assumption 
as well as on rejection of the one, contradictions follow. 
The positive sense of these antinomies, which, however, 
can only be got by means of inferences that are not 
made by Plato himself, but left by him to the reader's 
activity, is as follows : — The first of the antinomies 
shows that the one, if conceived in abstract contradiction 
to the many, is not even one, that is, that it is unthink- 
able. The second shows, that in this case the reality of 
the many is also unthinkable. The third shows that the 
one, or the idea, cannot be thought, as not being, since 
of the absolutely non-existent there can neither be notion 
nor predicate, and since, if non-being be excluded from 
all community with being, all coming to be and ceasing 
to be, all likeness and unlikeness, all conception and ex- 
planation of it are also denied. The fourth, lastly, shows, 
that the not-one cannot be thought without the one, the 
many not without the idea. What now is Plato's object 
in this discussion of the dialectical relation between the 
notions of the one and the many ? Does he intend by 
the notion of the one only to render clear, as it were by an 
example, the method of the dialectical manipulation of 
the notions ; or is the discussion of this notion itself the 



73 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

special object of the exposition ? Plainly the latter must 
be the case, if the dialogue is not to end resultless, and 
its two parts are not to rest without inner connexion. But 
how comes precisely this notion of the one to be treated 
by Plato in a special inquiry ? If we will remind our- 
selves that the Eleatics had, in the antithesis of the one 
and the many, contemplated the antithesis of the true 
and the phenomenal, that Plato likewise regards his ideas 
as unities of the multiplex, as what in the many is one 
and identical, using indiscriminately, indeed, * idea ' and 
1 the one,' as synonymous, and denning dialectic the art 
of combining the many into unity (Rep. vn. 537), we shall 
perceive that the one which is the object of inquiry in the 
Parmenides is the idea in general, that is, in its logical 
form, and that in the dialectic of the one and the many, 
Plato consequently seeks to exhibit the dialectic of the idea 
and the phenomenal world, or to determine and establish 
dialectically the correct view of the idea as the unity in 
this phenomenal world. Proof being led in the Par- 
menides, on the one hand, that the many cannot be 
thought without the one, and, on the other hand, that 
the one must be such as comprehends within itself the 
many, there results, on the one hand, that the being of 
the phenomenal world, or of the many, has only so far 
truth as the one, the notion, is in it, and, on the other 
hand, that the notion, in order to be capable of existence 
in the phenomenal world, actually is of such a nature as 
not to be an abstract one, but multiplicity in unity. 
Matter — this is the indirect result of the Parmenides — 
has, as the indeterminate, in finitely divisible mass, no 
actuality ; it is in relation to the world of ideas non- 
beent : and, if indeed the ideas, as what truly is, obtain 
in it their manifestation, still all that is real in the mani- 
festation is the idea itself : the world of manifestation 
holds from the world of ideas that shines into it its en- 
tire existence in fee, and being comes to it only so far as 
its import is the notion. 

(d.) Positive exposition of the ideal theory. — The ideas 
may, according to the various sides of their historical 
connexion, be denned as the common element in the 
manifold, the universal in the individual, the one in the 
many, the fixed and permanent in the mutable. In a 
subjective reference, they are principles of cognition, 
certain in themselves and inderivative from experience, 
the in-born regulatives of all our knowledge. In an ob- 



PLATO. 77 

jective reference, they are the immutable principles of 
existence and the world without, incorporeal, indivisible, 
simple unities, that are present in whatever may in any 
way prove itself self-subsistent. The ideal theory origi- 
nates in the desire to express the essence of things, what 
each thing veritably is, to state in notions what of being 
is identical with thought, to comprehend the real world 
as an intellectual world organized within itself. Aristotle 
expressly assigns this desire of scientific cognition as mo- 
tive of the Platonic theory of ideas. * Plato/ he say3 
(Meta. xiit. 4), ' came upon his ideal theory, because he 
was convinced of the truth of the Heraclitic view of the 
things of sense, and regarded them as an eternal flux. 
But if, Plato reasoned, there is to be a science or scientific 
knowledge of anything, there must, together with the 
things of sense, exist other entities possessed of stability ; 
for there can be no science of the fleeting. * It is for the 
idea of science, then, that the reality of the ideas is de- 
manded ; but this can only be possible if the notion is 
the ground of all being. This is the opinion of Plato. 
Neither a true knowing nor a true being is for him pos- 
sible without the absolute notions, the ideas. 

What now does Plato understand by idea ? That not 
only the ideal notions of the beautiful and the good are 
for him ideas, appears from what has been said. An 
idea, as the name alone (etdos) intimates, has always 
place wherever a general notion of species and genus 
has place. Thus Plato speaks of the idea of a bed, of a 
table, of strength, of health, of the voice, of colour, of 
ideas of mere relation and quality, of ideas of mathe- 
matical figures, nay, even of ideas of the non-beent, and 
of what is in its nature only a contradiction to the idea, 
as depravity and vice. In a word, there is always an idea 
to be assumed whenever a many is designated by the 
same appellative, by a common name (Rep. x. 596) ; or, as 
Aristotle has it (Meta. xn. 3), Plato assumed for every 
class of existence an idea. Plato expresses himself in 
this sense in the opening of the Parmenides. The young 
Socrates is there asked by Parmenides what he takes for 
an idea? Socrates then enumerates the moral ideas, 
those of the- just, the beautiful, the good, without condi- 
tion ; he also admits, but with hesitation, the physical 
ideas, as of man, fire, water. As for ideas of what is 
only formless mass, or only part in something else, such 
as hair, filth, and dirt, these he will not admit, but is 



56 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

advisecj by Parmenides, that when philosophy shall have 
taken full possession of him, he will no longer despise 
such things, that is, he will perceive how even they, 
though in a remoter manner, participate in the idea. 
Here, at least, the demand is expressed, to assume no 
sphere of being as abandoned of the idea, to vindicate 
for rational cognition even what is apparently the most 
irrational and contingent, and to comprehend all that 
exists as an existence of reason. 

(e.) The relation of the ideas to the world of sense. — In 
analogy with the various definitions of the idea are the 
various designations which Plato uses for the things of 
sense and the world without. The latter he names the 
many, the divisible, unlimited, indeterminate, and mea- 
sureless, that which becomes, the relative, the big and 
little, the non-beent. The question, however, in what 
relation the two worlds of sense and of the ideas stand 
to each other, Plato has answered neither satisfactorily 
nor in agreement with himself. When he characterizes, 
as is most usual, the relation of things to the notions as 
one of participation, or when he speaks of things as 
copies or adumbrations of the ideas which are then as 
archetypes, the main difficulty of the ideal theory is, 
by such figurative expressions, not removed, but only 
concealed. The difficulty lies in the contradiction, that 
Plato now grants the reality of becoming and of its 
sphere, and again declares the ideas, these stable and 
ever self -identical substances to be alone what is actual. 
Formally, indeed, Plato is so far consistent with himself 
that he designates crass matter not as positive substrate, 
but as the non-beent, and expressly protests that the 
sensuous is not for him beent, but only like to what is 
beent (Rep. x. 597). Consistent with this also is the 
demand of Parmenides that a completed philosophy 
should find, even in the smallest particular, the idea as 
that which is knowable in the material world, and that 
in the latter there should be left behind no remnant of 
an existence incommensurable with thought, but that all 
dualism should be got rid of. Finally Plato, in many of 
his expressions, would seem to regard the phenomenal 
world as only subjective appearance, as product of sub- 
jective conception, of a confused mode of conceiving 
the ideas. In this view the phenomena as opposed to the 
ideas are quite deprived of self-subsistency ; beside 
these they are no longer anything but the idea itself in 



PLATO. 79 

the form of non-being ; the phenomenal world holds 
from that of the ideas which shines into it, its whole 
existence in fee. But when again Plato names the sen- 
suous element a mixture of the element of self with that 
of the other or non -being (Tim. p. 35) ; when he calls 
the ideas vowels which, chainlike, pervade all things 
{Soph. p. 253) ; when he thinks to himself the possibility 
of matter exhibiting resistance to the creative power of 
the ideas (Tim. p. 56) ; when he gives intimations of a 
malevolent world-soul (Laws, x. 896), and of an undivine 
natural principle in the world (States, p. 268) ; when he 
conceives in the Phwdo the relation between body and 
soul as quite heterogeneous and antagonistic, — there re- 
mains, even after withdrawal of the mythical form, as in 
the Timaius, and of the rhetorical, as in the Phcedo, 
enough to substantiate the contradiction which was 
pointed out above. It is most observable in the Timceus. 
Here Plato, in figuring the world of sense to be formed 
by the Creator on the model of the ideas, assumes for 
this world-forming power of Demiurgus, something at 
bottom that is adapted to receive into itself the image of 
the ideas. This something is compared by Plato himself 
co the material which artisans work up (whence the later 
name Hyle) ; he describes it as completely indefinite and 
formless, but as capable of copying in itself all kinds of 
forms, as invisible and shapeless, a something that is hard 
to be defined; and indeed it actually refuses to be exactly 
defined at any time by Plato. The actuality of matter is 
thus denied ; and even when Plato compares it to space, he 
considers it only as place of the sensuous world, as its nega- 
tive condition ; it participates in being only as receiving 
into itself the ideal form. But it is still the objective 
manifestation of the idea ; the visible world arises through 
the mixture of the ideas with this substrate, and when 
matter is. according to its metaphysical term, designated 
the ' other/ it is, as result of the dialectical discussions, 
with logical necessity, quite as much beent as non-beent. 
As Plato concealed not this difficulty from himself, he 
was contented to speak in similes and metaphors of a pre- 
supposition which he was as little able to dispense with 
as intelligibly conceive. He was unable to dispense with 
it, without either raising himself to the notion of an ab- 
solute creation, or considering matter as latest emauation 
of the absolute spirit, as basis of his self-conciliation 
with himself, or directly declaring it to be subjective 



80 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

appearance. The Platonic system is thus a futile struggle 
against dualism. 

(/.) The idea of the good, and the Divine Being. — If the 
truth of existence is expressed in the notions, and these 
again are so related that a higher notion comprehends 
and combines within it several lower ones, and in such 
a manner that, proceeding from one, we may find all the 
rest (Meno, p. 81), the ideas must constitute as a whole 
an articulate organism, a graduated series, in which a 
lower term must always present itself as basis and pre- 
supposition for the next higher. This series now must 
terminate in an idea which shall require for its support no 
higher idea or presupposition. This highest idea, the 
'ultimate in cognition,' the presupposition of the rest, 
itself without presupposition, is for Plato the idea of the 
good, that is, of the metaphysical, not the moral good 
(Pep. vii. 517). 

What, however, this absolute good is, Plato undertakes 
to show, as he says himself, only in copy. ' As the sun 
is the cause of sight, and cause not only of the visibility 
of things, but of their generation and growth, so the 
good is of such power and beauty that it is not only 
cause of science for the soul, but source of being and of 
truth for everything that is an object of science ; and as the 
sun is not itself either seeing, or what is seen, but stands 
above them, so likewise the good is not itself science and 
truth, but is over both, and both are not the good, but 
only the goodly ' [Pep. vi. 506). The idea of the good 
excludes all presupposition, so far as it has unconditional 
worth, and to all else gives worth. It is the ultimate 
ground at once of knowledge and of being, of reason and 
of what is reasoned, of subjective and objective, of ideal 
and real, but it is itself raised above this disjunction 
(Pep. VI. 508-517). Actual derivation, however, of the 
various other ideas from the single idea of the good, 
Plato has not attempted ; he proceeds here quite empi- 
rically ; a class of existence is assumed as given, is re- 
ferred to its common quality, and the latter is then 
expressed as idea. Nay, in having hypostasized the 
individual ideas, and thereby declared them each fixed 
and complete in itself, he has prescinded any reciprocal 
derivation of them, and rendered directly impossible any 
immanent progress from the one to the other. 

In what way, now, this idea of the good, and the ideas 
in general, are, in Plato's view, related to God, is a dif • 



PLATO. 81 

ficult question. All things considered, it must be held 
probable that Plato conceived both (God and the idea of 
the good) as identical ; but whether he understood again 
the supreme cause more specifically as a personal being 
or not, is a question that hardly admits of any quite 
definite answer. The system itself excludes, in consist- 
ency, any personality of God. For if only the universal 
(the ideas) is what veritably is, the absolute idea, or 
God, must also be absolutely universal. But that Plato 
himself consciously drew this consequence, can as 
little be maintained as the contrary proposition, that 
he was with definite philosophical consciousness a theist. 
For if, on the one hand, mythically or popularly, he 
makes mention, in innumerable places, of God, or the 
gods, this very plurality _of gods proves that he is speak- 
ing then in the sense of the traditional religion ; while, 
on the other hand, whenever his discourse is rigorously 
philosophical, he assigns to the personality of God a very 
insecure place beside the ideas. The probability is, then, 
that he never definitely put to himself the entire question 
of the personality of God ; that he allowed himself to en- 
tertain the religious idea of God as his own natural con- 
viction ; that, in an ethical interest, he even vindicated 
it as against the anthropomorphism of the mythological 
poets (Republic, Laws) ; that he attempted to establish it 
from the facts of design in nature and of a universally 
diffused belief in God (Laws) ; but that philosophically 
he made no use of it. 

5. The Platonic Physics. — (a.) Nature. — Through the 
notion of veritable being, which, conceived as the good, 
is the presupposition of all teleological explanation of 
nature, and through the notion of becoming, which is 
the fundamental quality of nature, dialectics pass into 
physics. As belonging to the sphere of reasonless, sen- 
suous perception, nature cannot claim, however, the 
same minuteness of consideration as dialectics. Plato 
would seem, then, to have applied himself to physical 
inquiries with less affection than to those of ethics and 
dialectics, and that too only in his later years ; he has 
devoted to them, indeed, only a single dialogue, the 
Timwus, and has gone to work there much less inde- 
pendently than anywhere else, that is to say, almost 
wholly in the manner of the Pythagoreans. The diffi- 
culty of the Timaius is augmented by its mythical form, 
which provoked, indeed, the ancient commentators them- 



82 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

selves. If we take the description it gives simply as it 
offers itself, however, we find it to assume, first, before 
the creation of anything, a world-former (Demiurgus), 
as moving deliberating principle ; and then, beside him, 
on the one hand the ideal world (which, ever self -identi- 
cal, remains immovable as the eternal archetype), and on 
the other, a chaotic, formless, lawless, fluctuating mass, 
which holds within it the germs of the material world, 
but without yet possessing any definite form or sub- 
stance. With these two elements, the Creator composes, 
next, the soul of the world, that is, the invisible dyna- 
mical principle of order and motion in the world (which 
is conceived, however, as extended in space). Demiurgus 
spreads out now this world-soul like a colossal net or 
frame, throughout the whole extent which the world 
is afterwards to occupy ; dividing it into the two spheres 
of the fixed stars and the planets, and the latter again 
into the seven special circles. Then the material world, 
— first realized through development of the chaotic mass 
into the four elements, — is built into this frame ; and, 
finally, by formation of the organic world its inner 
completion is accomplished. In this cosmogony of the 
Timceus, it is hard to discriminate between what is 
mythical and what philosophical; it is particularly 
difficult to decide, for instance, how far the succession of 
the creative acts in time, or what is historical in the con- 
struction, is to be considered as mere form. The mean- 
ing of the world-soul is clearer. In the Platonic system 
generally, the soul is the middle term between the ideas 
and what is corporeal, the medium by virtue of which 
the material element is formed and individualized, ani- 
mated and ruled ; in short, the medium by which it is 
raised from confused plurality into organic unity, and so 
retained. Quite in the same way, numbers are to Plato 
a middle term between the ideas and the world, so far as 
through them the sum of material existence is brought into 
definite, quantitative relations of multitude, magnitude, 
figure, parts, position, distance, etc., — in other words, is 
arithmetically and geometrically disposed, — instead of ex- 
isting as a limitless and distinctionless mass. Both of 
these functions are united in the world-soul : it is the uni- 
versal medium between the ideas and matter ; the grand 
world-schema to which the latter on the great scale owes 
its formation and articulation ; the mighty cosmical 
power by which it (in the heavenly bodies, for example) is 



PLATO. 83 

retained in the given arrangement, moved (made to re- 
volve), and raised by such movement in law into a real copy 
of the ideas. Plato's explanation of nature, in contrast to 
the earlier mechanical ones, is thoroughly teleological ; 
it is constructed according to the idea of the good. 
Plato conceives the world as the work of unenvious 
divine goodness, which wills to create what shall be like 
itself. Demiurgus, by model of the eternal ideas, has 
fashioned it in perfection. Endowed with life and reason 
through the soul that is immanent in it, destined to en- 
dure throughout all time and never to become old, it is 
withal the infinitely beautiful, the infinitely divine copy of 
the good. Made in the image of perfection, it corresponds 
to the sole, all-embracing, and essential one, and is itself 
one ; for an infinite number of worlds cannot be thought 
as conceivable and actual. For the same cause it has the 
form of a globe, the most perfect and uniform of shapes, 
and which comprehends all others ; its motion also is that 
of a circle, because, as return into itself, that movement 
is the likest of all to the movement of reason. The de- 
tails of the Timceus, the derivation of the four elements, 
the distribution of the seven planets in conformity to the 
musical octave, the conception of the stars as immortal 
superior beings, the representation of the earth as at rest 
in the middle of the world — an idea which was subse- 
quently developed through subsidiary hypotheses into 
the Ptolemaic system, — the reduction of all the forms of 
matter to those of geometry, the classification of animated 
beings in accordance with the four elements into beings 
of fire or light (gods and demons), of air, of water, and 
of earth, the discussions on organic nature, and especi- 
ally on the structure of the human body, can here only 
be mentioned. These matters possess philosophical in- 
terest, not so much in consequence of their substantial 
value — for they only expose the entire insufficiency of 
the natural philosophy of the period — as of the main 
conception that the world is the product and copy of 
reason, that it is an organism of order, harmony, and 
beauty, that it is the self-realization of the good. 

(&.) The Soul. — The theory of the soul, so far as it 
enters not into the discussion of applied morality, but 
only considers the foundations of the moral act, is the 
completion, the cope-stone of the Platonic physics. The 
individual soul possesses the same nature and character 
as the universal soul ; and it belonged to the perfection 



84 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of the world, that there should be a plurality of souls, 
through which the principle of reason and of life might 
be individualized in a plenitude of particular beings. 
The soul in itself is indestructible, and, through reason, 
in which it participates, of a divine nature ; it is by its 
very principle destined for the cognition of the divine 
and eternal, for a pure bjissful life in the contemplation 
of the ideal world. But its union with a material body is 
no less essential ; the race of perishable beings was, for 
completion of the genera of things, necessarily also repre- 
sented in the universe, and through that life in the body 
which devolves on the individual soul. The soul, as 
united with the body, participates in its motions and 
changes, and is in this reference akin to the perishable, 
being subject to the fluctuation of the conditions of sen- 
suous life, and to the influence of sensuous feelings and 
greeds. It cannot consequently maintain itself in its pure 
divinity, but sinks from the celestial to the earthly, 
from the divine to the mortal. The conflict between the 
higher and the lower principle has its seat in the indivi- 
dual soul ; intelligence succumbs to the power of sense ; 
the absolute dualism of idea and reality, which in the 
great whole of the world disappears into unity, comes 
here into full actuality. The soul, on the one hand, 
sways and controls the body ; but, on the other hand, 
the body no less sways and controls the soul, which is 
then debased into the lower life of sense, into forgetful- 
ness of its higher origin, into mere finitude of perception 
and will. This interaction of soul and body is brought 
about by a lower, sensuous faculty, and Plato distin- 
guishes, therefore, two constituents of the soul, one 
divine and rational, the other mortal and irrational. It 
is between these two that courage (dvfibs, courage, cozur, 
heart), as intermediating link, appears. Courage is 
nobler, indeed, than sensuous appetite, but because it 
manifests itself also in children, and even in brutes, and 
frequently allows itself to be blindly hurried on without 
reflection, it belongs, like sense, to the natural side in 
man, and must not therefore be confounded with reason. 
The «oul, consequently, is to Plato, during its connexion 
with the body and the world of sense, placed in a con- 
dition utterly inadequate to its proper being. In itself 
divine, possessed of true knowledge, independent, free, it 
is in life the reverse, weak, sensuous, passive to the 
influences of the bodily nature, betrayed into evil and 



PLATO. 85 

into sin by all the disquietudes, lusts, passions, contests, 
which arise to it from the preponderance of the sensuous 
principle, from the necessity of physical self-preservation, 
and from the struggle for possession and enjoyment A 
dim sense of its higher origin, a longing for its home, the 
world of ideas — this, indeed, remains to it, and announces 
itself in love to knowledge, in enthusiasm for beauty 
{Eros), in the battle of the spirit to become lord of the 
body. But this very longing proclaims that the soul's 
true life is not this present sensuous existence, but 
lies rather in the future, in the future that follows its 
separation from the body. The soul which had given 
itself up to sense incurs the penalty of migration into 
new bodies, it may be even into lower forms of existence 
from which it is only delivered, when, in the course of 
time, it has recovered its purity. The pure soul, which 
has stood the proof of association with the corporeal world 
untainted, returns at death into the state of blissful repose, 
but only, after once more tasting it, to resume afresh the 
life of the body. The Platonic descriptions of these future 
states of the soul do not always agree, indeed ; the 
Phcedrus and the Phasdo, the Pepublic and the Thnceus, dif- 
fer from each other in many respects ; but Plato, like the 
Pythagoreans, is in earnest with them. It is really his 
opinion that the process of the world, the history of the 
universe, has no other import than this perpetual transi- 
tion of Psyche between the higher and the lower, the 
divine and the human world. Psyche is of too noble a 
nature only to begin with this life and then vanish ; she 
is divine and immortal ; but she is not pure being as the 
idea is, she has in her something of the character of the 
1 other ; ' she is at once spiritual and unspiritual, free 
and unfree ; these two contradictory elements of her being- 
attain to manifestation in that alternation of higher and 
lower states, in the form of a succession in time. The 
soul exhibits the enigma of an equal inclination to the 
ideal and the sensuous ; and this enigma, according to 
Plato, rinds its answer in this theory of the nature 
and destiny of the soul itself. All this seems very alien 
to Socrates ; the Socratic postulate that man shall act 
not from sense but from intellect, appears transformed 
here into a speculative philosopheme that purports to 
explain whence there is in man the union of both, sense 
and reason. But precisely in this closing concentration of 
his entire philosophy into the single point of the ethical 



86 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

nature and destiny of the soul, does Plato manifest him- 
self as a true disciple of his master, whose veritable 
vocation it had been to kindle in his pupil this lofty ideal 
of the sublimity of the soul in comparison with sense. 

6. The Platonic Ethics. — The question in Plato's 
ethics (which ethics are nothing else than the ideal theory 
practically applied) is — with him as well as with the 
other Socratics — to ascertain and establish the summum 
bonum, the end or aim, which it shall be the object of 
all will and of all action to realize. It is in accordance 
with this principle (the summum bonum) that the theory 
of virtue is determined, which again forms the founda- 
tion of the theory of the state as the objective actualiza- 
tion of the good in human society. 

(a.) The supreme good. — What is the ultimate end is 
the simple result of the entire idea of the Platonic 
system. Not life in the non-being, the perish ableness, 
the changefulness of sensuous existence, but exaltation 
into true, into ideal being, is, whether in its own nature 
or in its relation to the soul, that which is the good 
absolutely. The task and destiny of the soul is flight from 
the inward and outward evils of sense, purification and 
emancipation from corporeal influence, the striving to 
become pure, just, and like withal to God (Thecet, 
Phcedo) ; and the path to this is withdrawal from sensuous 
imaginations and appetites, retirement into thought, 
into the cognition of truth, in a word, philosophy. 
Philosophy, for Plato as for Socrates, is not something 
merely theoretical, but the return of the soul into its 
true being, the spiritual new birth, in which it regains 
its lost knowledge of the ideal world and a consciousness 
of its own loftier origin, of its pristine exaltation over 
the world of sense. In philosophy, spirit purifies itself 
from all sensuous admixture, it comes to its own self, it 
regains the freedom and peace of which it had been de- 
prived by its immersion in matter. It was natural that, 
with this view, Plato should offer the most determined 
opposition to the Sophistico-Cyrenaic hedonism ; to the 
refutation of which the Gorgias and the Philebus are 
especially dedicated. It is demonstrated in these that 
pleasure is something insubstantial and indefinite, from 
which no order or harmony can result to life, that it is 
something exceedingly relative, transforming itself readily 
into pain, and all the more pain the more boundlessly it 
is worshipped ; and that it is a contradiction to seek to 



PLATO. 87 

put pleasure, this that is inwardly worthless, above the 
power and virtue of the soul. On the other side, Plato 
nowise approves, nevertheless, any more in his practical 
than in his theoretical philosophy, of the Cynico-Megaric 
abstraction, which, besides cognition, will recognise nothing 
positive, — no concrete spiritual activity, no special science 
or art, as well as no refinement of life by means of a 
lawful pleasure. The concrete sciences and arts, and 
those kinds of enjoyment which interfere not with the 
harmony of spiritual life, those pure, innocent, passion- 
less, unsophisticated delights that arise from intellectual 
and natural beauty, — these have their rights as well as 
pure philosophy. The good is not a life consisting merely 
of knowledge or merely of pleasure, but one commingled 
of both, though still such that knowledge presides in it as 
that element which introduces measure, order, and rationa- 
lity of will and action. A certain vacillation, however, 
is not to be denied in Plato's views with respect to the 
highest good. As sensuous existence is for him, at one 
time, only pure non-being, the mere disturbance and 
distortion of ideal being, and at another time the fair 
copy of its ideal archetype, so there appear in the ethics 
at one time an inclination to a quite ascetic conception 
of sense as the single fountain of evil and sin (Phado), 
and at another time a more positive view (Banquet, Phi- 
kbits), which designates a life without enjoyment as too 
abstract, monotonous, spiritless, and therefore allows its 
own right to the beautiful equally with the good. 

(6.) Virtue. — In his theory of virtue, Plato is at first 
quite Socratic. That virtue depends on knowledge (Pro- 
tagoras), and is, therefore, capable of being taught 
(Mend), this with him is established ; and as for its unity, 
though it must have resulted to him from his later dia- 
lectical investigations, that the one is at the same time 
many and the many at the same time one, and that 
consequently virtue may be regarded not more as one 
than as many, he still, by predilection, accentuates, 
nevertheless, the unity and natural connexion of all the 
virtues. Particularly in the preliminary dialogues is it 
his object to depict each of the individual virtues as com- 
prehending in it the sum of all virtue. In classifying the 
virtues, Plato assumes, for the most part, the popular 
quadruplicity which he found current ; only for the first 
time in the Republic (iv. 441) does he attempt their 
scientific derivation through reduction to his psycho- 



88 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

logical triplicity. The virtue of reason is wisdom, the 
guiding and tempering virtue ; for in the soul it is reason 
that must rule. The virtue of the heart is courage, 
reason's auxiliary ; or it is the heart that, imbued with 
true knowledge, approves itself in the struggle against 
pleasure and pain, as the correct judge of what is fear- 
ful or not fearful. The virtue of sensuous appetite, 
by which the latter is reduced to its proper measure, is 
temperance. Finally, that virtue, to which falls the due 
ranging and ranking of the single faculties reciprocally, 
the regulatrix of the soul, and, therefore, the bond and 
the unity of the other three virtues, is justice. 

The virtue of justice it is also which, as it conjoins in 
itself all the other threads of virtue, leads beyond the 
sphere of individual life, and founds the totality of a 
moral world. Justice ' in large letters,' morality as actu- 
alized in the life of society, — this is the state. Only here 
does the demand for a perfected harmony of human life 
become real. In and through the state it is that there 
takes place for reason the complete working-up of its 
own material. 

(c.) The State. — The Platonic state is usually regarded 
as a so-called ideal, as a chimera, the product indeed of a 
brain of genius, but amongst men, as in this sublunary 
world they once for all are, entirely impracticable. Plato 
himself, it is supposed, shall have viewed the matter 
not otherwise, and — his Republic being but the sketch of 
the pure ideal of a political constitution — shall, in the Laws, 
as this work itself expressly declares, have intended to 
prefigure that which is actually practicable, and to fur- 
nish, from the point of view of ordinary consciousness, 
an applied philosophy of the state. But this, firstly, 
was not Plato's own opinion. Although he does himself 
undoubtedly declare that the state which he has described 
is not likely to be found on earth, and is only an arche- 
type in heaven for the instruction of the philosopher (ix. 
592), yet he requires that its realization be asymptotically 
approached ; nay, he investigates the conditions and 
means under and through which such a state may be 
possibly accomplished ; and so it is, also, that his parti- 
cular institutions are largely directed against the various 
vices which must inevitably arise from the various 
characters and temperaments of men. To a philosopher 
like Plato, who only in the idea sees the actual and true, 
a constitution alien to the idea could only appear as the 



PLATO. 89 

untrue ; and the usual theory that makes him compose 
his Republic with a consciousness of its impracticability, 
entirely mistakes the position of the Platonic philosophy. 
Further, the question whether such a state as that of 
Plato is possible and the best, is, in itself, inapposite and 
irrelevant. The Platonic state is the Greek idea of a 
state in general, presented in the form of a narrative. 
But the idea, as the rational import at every moment of 
the world's history, is, — just because it is an absolute 
actuality, the essential and the necessary in the 
existent, — no idle and impotent ideal. The true ideal 
is not to be actual, but is actual, and alone actual ; 
that an idea should be too good for existence, or em- 
pirical reality too bad for an idea, this were a fault of 
the ideal itself. Plato, then, did not deal in the manu- 
facture of abstract theories ; the philosopher cannot over- 
leap his time, but must recognise and comprehend it 
only according to its own genuine significance. This did 
Plato; he stands quite on the level of his day; it is 
Greek political life raised into the idea that constitutes 
the genuine burthen of the Platonic Republic. In it 
Plato has exhibited Grecian morality on its substantial 
side (side of instinctive observance). If the Platonic 
republic appeared mainly as an ideal irreconcilable with 
empirical reality, it is not the ideality, but rather a de- 
fectiveness in ancient political life that is to blame 
for this. It is the restrictedness of personal subjective 
freedom that, before the Greek states began to break 
up in license, constituted the characteristic of the 
Hellenic political view. Thus in Plato, too, poli- 
tical morality has the character of substantiality (cus- 
tomary observance, not conscious action on subjective 
discernment and conviction). The institutions of his 
state, whatever ridicule and censure they may have pro- 
voked even from the ancients, are only consequences, 
which, drawn with inexorable necessity, result from the 
idea of the Grecian state, so far as that state, in its 
differences from the states of modern times, granted, 
neither to the corporations nor to the citizens individu* 
ally, any legal sphere of action independent of itself. 
The principle of subjective freedom failed. This non- 
recognition of the subject, Plato, as against the destruc- 
tive tendencies of the time, and in a rigorously logical 
manner, has certainly made the principle of his own ideal 
state. 



90 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

The general character of the Platonic state is, as said, 
the sacrifice, the exclusive abandonment of the individual 
to the universal, to the political element, — the reduction 
of moral to political virtue. Political observance shall, so 
Plato wills it, become universal, and attain to an immut- 
able existence ; the principle of sense shall everywhere be 
checked, and subjugated to that of intelligence. But if 
this is to be so, then a universal, a political authority 
must undertake the training of all to virtue, or the con- 
servation of public morals ; and all subjective self-will, 
every egotistic end, must disappear in the collective 
will and in the collective end. So powerful is the prin- 
ciple of sense in men, that only by the might of common 
institutions, only by the suppression of all subjective acti- 
vity for private interests, only by the disappearance of the 
individual in the universal, can it be neutralized. Virtue 
is possible — and consequently true well-being — only by 
these means. Virtue must be real in the state, only so 
will it become real in the individual citizen. Hence the 
severity and rigour of the Platonic political idea. In a 
perfect state all should be in common to all, — joy and 
sorrow, even eyes and ears and hands. All men shall 
have scope only as universal men. For the realization of 
this perfect unity and universality, there must be the 
disappearance of all individuality and particularity. 
Private property and domestic life (in place of which a 
community of goods and women appears), education and 
instruction, the choice of professional and other avoca- 
tions, even all the remaining activities of the individual 
in art and science — all this must be sacrificed to the end 
of the state, and intrusted to the guidance and control 
of the presiding authorities. The individual must be 
contented to claim only that good which belongs to 
him as a component particle of the state. The Platonic 
construction of the ideal state descends, therefore, even 
to the minutest details. The two formative means of 
the higher ranks, gymnastics and music, the study of 
mathematics and philosophy, the selection of musical in- 
struments and metre of verse, the bodily exercises and 
the military service of the female sex, the arrangement of 
marriages, the age at which any one may study dialectics, 
or contract wedlock, or beget or bear children — on all 
these matters Plato has given the exactest prescripts and 
instructions. The state is for him only a huge educa- 
tional establishment, a single family on the great 



PLATO. 91 

scale. Even lyrical poetry Plato "will have practised 
only under the supervision of judges. Epic and dramatic 
poetry (nay Homer and Hesiod themselves !) shall be 
banished from the state, the one because it excites and 
misleads the mind, the other because it propagates de- 
basing representations of the gods. With like rigorism 
the Platonic state proceeds against physical defects : 
feeble children, or children born imperfect, are to be 
cast out ; the sick are not to be tended and nourished* 
We find here the main antithesis of the ancient states by 
nature to the modern states by law. Plato recognised 
not the knowledge, will, and purpose of the individual, 
and yet the individual has a right to demand this. To 
reconcile the two sides — the general end and the indi- 
vidual end — to combine with the greatest possible omni- 
potence of the state the greatest possible freedom of the 
conscious individual will, this was the problem reserved 
for the modern state. 

The political institutions of the Platonic state are de- 
cidedly aristocratic. Grown up in aversion to the extra- 
vagances of the Athenian democracy, Plato prefers an un- 
limited monarchy to all other constitutions, but still only 
such a one as shall have for its head a consummate ruler, 
a perfected philosopher. The saying of Plato is familiar, 
that only when philosophers shall become rulers, or when 
those who are at present rulers shall philosophize fully 
and truly, and shall unite political power and philosophy 
together, will it be possible to elevate the state to its true 
purpose (v. 473). That there should only be one ruler, 
this appears to him just, because there are so few men 
possessed of political wisdom. In his Laws, Plato re- 
nounces this ideal of a perfect ruler, who as a living law 
shall have power to govern the state according to his 
own unrestrained authority, and prefers as the best, those 
mixed constitutions which combine in themselves both 
something of monarchy and something of democracy. It 
is the aristocratic tendency of the Platonic political ideal 
which gives rise further to the sharp distinction of the 
various classes, and the entire exclusion of the third from 
any share in political life proper. Psychologically, Plato 
in strictness has only a bipartition into the senses and 
the intellect, into mortal and immortal ; politically also 
he has only a similar division into the government and 
its subjects. This distinction is proclaimed the neces- 
sary condition of every state ; but, in analogy with the 



32 HISTOBY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

psychological middle term of the heart, there is interca- 
lated, between the ruling class and the working class, the 
middle term of the fighting class. We have thus three 
classes, that of the rulers, correspondent to reason, that 
of the warriors correspondent to heart, and that of 
the workers correspondent to appetite. To these three 
classes belong three several functions : to the first the 
function of legislation, of acting and consulting for 
the universal ; to the second the function of defending 
the common weal against enemies from without ; to 
the third the function of providing for the material 
singular, for the daily want, as in agriculture, the 
raising of cattle, and the building of houses. Through 
each of the three classes and its functions there accrues 
to the state a special virtue : through the class of rulers 
wisdom, through the class of warders or warriors cour- 
age, through the class of workers temperance, which, as 
securing obedience to the rulers, is peculiarly the virtue 
of this last class. From the due union of these three 
virtues in the general life of the state, there arises justice, 
a virtue, consequently, which represents the systematic 
articulation of the totality, the organic distribution of 
the whole into its moments. With the lowest class, that 
of manual labourers, Plato occupies himself the least ; for 
the state it is only an instrument. Even legislation and 
the administration of justice in reference to the labouring 
mass of the people, he holds for inessential. The dis- 
tance between rulers and warders is less marked ; Plato 
rather, as if reason were but the highest development of 
courage, allows, in analogy with the fundamental psycho- 
logical bipartition, the two classes to pass over into each 
other, in appointing that the oldest and best of the 
warders shall be selected for rulers. The education of 
the warders, therefore, shall be carefully planned and 
administered by the state, in order that with them the 
principle of courage, without forfeiting the energy pecu- 
liar to it, may be imbued with reason. The most virtu- 
ous, and dialectically the most accomplished among the 
warders, are, immediately on completion of their thirtieth 
year, to be taken apart, tried, and ordered to the dis- 
charge of offices. When in these they have again ap- 
proved themselves, they are in their fiftieth year to be 
raised to the highest rank, and to be held bound in 
duty, if they have realized the idea of the good, to sub- 
stantiate that exemplar in the state, yet so that each, 



PLATO. 93 

only when his turn comes, shall undertake the control 
of the state, but shall devote to philosophy the rest of his 
time. By means of these dispositions the state shall 
be exalted into an unconditional sovereignty of reason 
under guidance of the idea of the good. 

7. Retrospect. — With Plato, Greek philosophy has 
attained to the culminating point of its development. 
The Platonic system is the first complete scientific con- 
struction of the entire natural and spiritual universe 
under guidance of a philosophical principle ; it is the first 
type and pattern of all higher speculation, of all meta- 
physical as well as of all ethical idealism. Beared on the 
simple foundation of Socrates, the idea of philosophy has 
here for the first time gained an all-embracing realiza- 
tion. The spirit of philosophy has, indeed, raised itself 
here into full consciousness of itself, a consciousness 
which first awoke in Socrates only as a dim and uncer- 
tain instinct. The eagle flight of the genius of Plato 
required to add itself before there could be unfolded into 
full reality that for which Socrates had been able only to 
clear the way. At the same time, nevertheless, with 
Plato, philosophy exhibited an idealistic antithesis to the 
given actuality, an antithesis which, lying more in the 
character of its originator and in his relation to the time, 
than in the nature of the Greek spirit, demanded the 
supplement of a more realistic theory of things. This 
was supplied by Aristotle. 



XV. — The Older Academy. 

IN the older academy the spirit that prevailed was not 
one of invention. With the exception of a few 
attempts at continuation, we find only standstill, and a 
gradual retrogression of the Platonic philosophizing. 
After the death of Plato, Speusippus, his nephew, taught 
in the academy for the period of eight years ; Xenocrates 
succeeded him ; and Polemon, Crates, and Crantor fol- 
lowed. We find ourselves in a time now in which express 
educational institutions for higher culture are established, 
and the earlier teacher transfers the succession to the 
later. The older academy, so far as can be gathered from 
the scanty records, was characterized in general by a 
predominance of the tendency to erudition, by the in- 
crease of Pythagorean elements, — particularly as regards 



94 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the Pythagorean number-theory, with which were con- 
nected the high estimation of the mathematical sciences 
(especially arithmetic and astronomy), and the regression 
of the ideal theory, — and finally by the coming into 
vogue of fantastic demonological conceptions, in which 
worship of the stars played a principal part. At a later 
period efforts were made to return again to the unso- 
phisticated doctrine of Plato. Crantor is named as the 
first expounder of the Platonic writings. 

As Plato was the only true disciple of Socrates, so in 
turn the only true disciple of Plato was, though by his 
fellows accused of infidelity, Aristotle. 

To him we pass at once for the demonstration, as 
well of his true relation to Plato, as of his advance be- 
yond Plato, and within Plato's own philosophy. (Com- 
pare xvi. 3, c. aa.) 

XVI— Aristotle. 

LIFE and Writings of Aristotle. — Aristotle was 
born at Stagira, a Greek colony in Thrace, in the 
year 385 B.C. Mcomachus, his father, was the physician 
and friend of Amyntas, king of Macedonia. The former 
relation may have influenced the scientific pursuits of 
the son; the latter his subsequent call to the Mace- 
donian court. Early deprived of his parents, he came 
in his seventeenth year to Athens ; and here in Plato's 
society he remained twenty years. Of his personal 
relations to Plato there are several rumours, — some 
favourable, as that Plato, for his unceasing study, shall 
have called him the reader, and, comparing him with 
Xenocrates, shall have said, the latter requires the 
spur, the former the bridle, — some also unfavourable. 
Among the latter is the reproach of ingratitude to his 
master, and although the most of the anecdotes in this 
connexion deserve little credit, — especially as we find 
Aristotle on friendly terms with Xenocrates, even after 
the death of Plato, — yet the author Aristotle cannot 
be altogether acquitted of a certain unscrupulousness 
towards Plato and the philosophy of Plato, which is 
still capable, perhaps, of a certain psychological explana- 
tion (through indication, that is, of human motive). 
Aristotle, after the death of Plato, went with Xeno- 
crates to the court of Hermeias, prince of Atarneus 
in Mysia, whose sister Pythias he took to wife, when 



ARISTOTLE. 95 

Hernieias fell beneath the perfidy of the Persians. 
After the death of Pythias he married Herpyllis, by 
whom he had his son Nicomachus. In the year 343, 
he was appointed by Philip, king of Macedon, to 
superintend the education of his son Alexander, then 
thirteen years old. Father and son honoured him 
highly, and the latter subsequently assisted his studies 
with royal munificence. When Alexander set out on 
the Persian expedition, Aristotle took up his abode 
in Athens, teaching in the Lyceum, the only gym- 
nasium left open for him ; for the Academy and the 
Cynosarges were already occupied, the one by Xeno- 
crates and the other by the Cynics. His school de- 
rived its name, Peripatetic, from the shady walks 
(itepliraToi) of the Lyceum, in which Aristotle was ac- 
customed to walk about as he philosophized. He is 
said to have lectured in the morning to his more ad- 
vanced disciples on abstruser science (acroamatic inves- 
tigation), and in the evening to a larger audience on 
the disciplines which concern a more general education 
(exoteric discourses). After the death of Alexander, 
with whom latterly he had fallen out of favour, being 
accused (probably from political motives) of blasphemy 
by the Athenians, he left their city, where he had taught 
for thirteen years, in order, as he expressed it, that 
they might not sin a second time against philosophy. 
He died in the year 322 at Chalcis in Eubcea. 

Aristotle left behind him an unusual multitude of 
writings, of which the fewer number (a sixth perhaps), 
but incomparably the more valuable, have come down to 
us : in such a state, nevertheless, as leaves room for 
many doubts and difficulties. The account given by 
Strabo, it is true, of the fate of the Aristotelian writings, 
and of the damages received by them in the cellar at 
Scepsis in Troas, has been proved a fable, or at least to 
be limited to the original manuscripts : but the fragment- 
ary, sketch-like appearance of several of them, and these 
the most important, as the Metaphysics, the repeated revi- 
sion aud reconstruction of the same treatise, as the Ethics, 
the disorder and striking repetitions in single works, 
the distinction made by Aristotle himself between writ- 
ings acroamatic and writings exoteric, — all this leads to 
the conjecture that we have before us for the most part 
but redactions of oral discourses at the hands of pupils. 

2. General Chakacter and Classification of the 



96 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Aristotelian Philosophy. — With Aristotle, philosophy, 
which in Plato's hands remained popular both in form 
and matter, becomes universal, freed from its Hellenic 
specialty. The Platonic dialogue is metamorphosed into 
dry prose. In the place of poetic drapery and myths 
we have a cold fixed technical dialect ; the faculty 
which in Plato was intuitive is in Aristotle discursive ; 
the direct vision through reason of the one is replaced in 
the other by reflection and logic. Turning from the 
Platonic unity of being, Aristotle prefers to direct his 
regards to the variety of the world ; he seeks the idea only 
in its concrete realization, and seizes the individual fact in 
its characteristic quality and differences, rather than in 
its relation to the idea. He receives with equal interest the 
fact of nature, or of history, or of the soul of man. But he 
proceeds always by reference to what is individual ; he re- 
quires always a datum, on occasion of which to unfold his 
thoughts ; it is always what is empirical and matter-of-fact 
that solicits his speculation and leads it forward. His whole 
philosophy is a description of the given aud empirical, 
and only because it takes this up in its totality, takes up 
its synthesis, only because it carries the induction com- 
pletely out, does it deserve the name of a philosophy. 
Only as the absolute empiricist is it that Aristotle is the 
true philosopher. 

This character of the Aristotelian philosophy explains 
in the first place its encyclopaedic tendency, inasmuch as 
all the facts of experience have, as such, equal claims on 
observation. Hence Aristotle is the founder of several 
sciences unknown before him : he is not only the founder 
of logic, but the founder also of natural history, of empi- 
rical psychology, and of the theory of morals. 

The love of facts in Aristotle explains further his pre- 
dominating inclination for physics ; for nature is what is 
most a fact, what i3 most undeniably there. It coheres 
with this, too, that Aristotle is the first philosopher, who 
(in his own way) deigned to bestow on history any exact 
attention. The first book of the Metaphysics is the first 
attempt at a history of philosophy, just as his Politics are 
the first critical history of the various forms and consti- 
tutions of the state. As through criticism of his prede- 
cessors in the one, so through criticism of the pre-existent 
coustitutions in the other, does he lay the ground for his 
own theory, which he desires to appear always only 
as the consequence of historical fact. 



ARISTOTLE. 97 

It is clear from this that likewise tlie method of Aris- 
totle must be different from that of Plato. He proceeds, 
not synthetically and dialectically like the latter, but 
almost exclusively analytically and regressively, that is to 
say, passing ever backwards from what is concrete to its 
ultimate grounds and principles. If Plato took his stand 
on the idea, in order from that position to elucidate and 
explain the data of experience, Aristotle, on the contrary, 
takes his stand on these data in order to discover in 
them and demonstrate in them the idea. His method, 
therefore, is induction, that is, the derivation of general 
inferences and results from a sum of given facts and 
phenomena, while his exposition is the usual raisonne- 
ment, a dispassionate estimate of facts, phenomena, 
circumstances, and possibilities. He bears himself mostly 
only as a thoughtful observer. Renouncing any expecta- 
tion of universality and necessity in his conclusions, he is 
contented to have established an approximate truth, and 
pleased to have reached the greatest possible probability. 
He frequently declares, that science relates not merely to 
the immutable and necessary, but also to what usually 
happens : beyond its province, he saj T s, there is only the 
contingent. Philosophy has consequently for him the 
character and the value of a calculation of probabilities, 
and his mode of exposition assumes not unfrequently 
only the form of a dubious counting up. Hence no trace 
of the Platonic ideals. Hence his dislike to imaginative 
flights and poetic figures in philosophy, a dislike which 
on one hand led him, indeed, to a fixed philosophical 
terminology, but was the occasion, on the other, of a 
frequent misinterpretation of those who had preceded 
him. Hence, too, in the sphere of action his invariable 
submission to the existent fact. 

With the empirical character of Aristotle's philoso- 
phizing, there coheres finally the disjointed nature of 
his writings, their want of any systematic classifica- 
tion and division. Always advancing from particular 
fact to particular fact, he takes each region of reality 
by itself, and makes it the object of a special treatise ; 
but he omits for the most part to demonstrate the 
threads by which the parts might mutually cohere and 
clasp together into the whole of a system. He obtains 
thus a plurality of co-ordinated sciences, each of which 
has its independent foundation, but no highest science 
which should comprehend all. A leading and con- 
Q 



98 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

necting thought is doubtless present ; all his writings 
follow the idea of a whole ; but in the exposition 
systematic arrangement fails so much, each of his works 
is so much an independent monograph, that we are often 
perplexed by the question, What did Aristotle himself 
consider a part of philosophy and what not ? Nowhere 
does he supply either scheme or skeleton, seldom any 
concluding results or general summaries ; even the 
various classifications which he proposes for philosophy 
differ very much the one from the other. Sometimes he 
distinguishes practical and theoretical science, sometimes 
he places with these a third science, named of artistic 
production, and sometimes he speaks of three parts, 
ethics, physics, and logic. Theoretical philosophy itself, 
again, he divides at one time into logic and physics, and 
at another into theology, mathematics, and physics. 
None of these classifications, however, has he expressly 
adopted in the exposition of his system; he sets in 
general no value on them, he even openly declares his 
aversion to the method by divisions at all, and it is 
only from considerations of expediency that we, in ex- 
pounding his philosophy, adopt the Platonic trichotomy. 
3. Logic and Metaphysics. — (a.) Notion and relation of 
both. — The name Metaphysics is a creation of the Aristo- 
telian commentators. Plato's word for it was Dialectics, 
and Aristotle uses instead of it the phrjise ' first (funda- 
mental) philosophy,' while physics in a like connexion are 
for him ' second philosophy.' The relation of this first 
philosophy to the other sciences is defined by Aristotle 
as follows. Every science, he says, selects for investiga- 
tion a special sphere, a particular species of being, but 
none of them applies itself to the notion of being as such. 
There is a science necessary, therefore, which shall make 
an object of inquiry on its own account, of that which the 
other sciences accept from experience, and, as it were, 
hypothetically. This is the office of the first philosophy, 
which occupies itself, therefore, with being as being, 
whereas the other sciences have to do with special con- 
crete being. Metaphysics constituting, then, as this 
science of being and its elementary grounds, a presupposi- 
tion for the other disciplines, are, naturally, first philoso- 
phy. If there were, namely, says Aristotle, only physical 
beings, physics would be the first and only philosophy ; 
but if there is an immaterial and unmoved essence, 
which is the ground of all being, there must be also 



ARISTOTLE. 99 

an earlier, and, as earlier, universal philosophy. This first 
ground now of all being is God, and for that reason 
Aristotle sometimes also calls his first philosophy theology. 

It is difficult to define the relation between this first 
philosophy as the science of ultimate grounds, and that 
science which, usually named the logic of Aristotle, is 
found to receive its exposition in the writings in- 
cluded together under the title of Organon. Aristotle 
has not himself precisely determined the relations of these 
sciences, though, perhaps, it is the incomplete state of the 
Metaphysics that is partly to blame here. As, however, 
he includes both sciences under the name logic ; as he ex- 
pressly calls the investigation of the essence of things (vn. 
17), and of the theory of ideas (xni. 5), logical investiga- 
tion -i as he seeks to establish at full in the Metaphysics 
(IV.) the logical principle of contradiction as the absolute 
presupposition (condition) of all thinking, speaking, and 
philosophizing ; as he appropriates the inquiry into the 
process of proof to the same science which has also to 
inquire into essence (ni. 2, IV. 3) ; as he discusses the 
categories (to which he had previously devoted a special 
book incorporated with the Organon) over again in the 
Metaphysics (v.), — this much at all events may be main- 
tained with safety, that the inquiries of the Organon 
were not for him directly divided from those of the 
Metaphysics, and that the usual separation of formal 
logic and of metaphysics had not a place in his mind, 
although he has omitted any attempt to bring them closer. 

(b.) Logic. — The business of logic, natural or scientific, as 
faculty or as art, is to be able to prove through syllogisms, 
to form syllogisms, and to pronounce on syllogisms ; but 
syllogisms consist of propositions, and propositions of no- 
tions. It is in accordance, then, with these points of view, 
which belong naturally to the position, that Aristotle, in 
the various books of the Organon, discusses the details of 
logic and dialectics. The first essay in the Organon is ' The 
Categories,' an essay which, by treating the various notions 
proper, the universal predicates of being, constitutes the 
first attempt at an ontology. Aristotle enumerates ten of 
these — substance, quantity, quality, relation, where, when, 
position, possession, action, passion. The second essay 
treats of language as expression of thought (' De Interpre- 
tation '), and discusses the various parts of discourse, aa 
propositions and sentences. The third treatise consists of 
the 'Analytic Books,' which show how conclusions may 



100 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

be referred to their principles, and arranged according to 
their premises. The first (prior) Analytics contain in two 
books the general theory of the syllogism. Syllogisms, 
again, are in matter and purpose either apodictic, pos- 
sessed of certain and rigorously demonstrable truth, or 
dialectic, directed to what is probable and disputable, or, 
lastly sophistic, intended to deceive by a false show of 
correctness. Apodictic arguments, and consequently 
proof in general, are treated in the two books of the 
second (posterior, last) Analytics, dialectic in the eight 
books of the Topics, and sophistic in the essay on * The 
Sophistical ElenchV 

Further details of the Aristotelian logic are, — through 
the usual formal exposition of this science, for which Aris- 
totle has furnished almost the entire material (hence Kant 
w r as able to say that logic, since Aristotle, had not made 
any step forwards nor any backwards), — known to every- 
body. Present formal logic is in advance of Aristotle only 
in two respects : first in adding to the categorical syllogism, 
which Aristotle alone contemplated, the hypothetical and 
disjunctive ones ; and, second, in supplementing the three 
first figures by the fourth. But the defect of the Aristote- 
lian logic, which was excusable in its founder, — its wholly 
empirical procedure, namely, — has not only been retained 
by the present formal logic, but has been even raised into 
a principle through the un- Aristotelian antithesis of the 
forms thinking, and the matter thought. Aristotle's 
object, properly, was only to collect the logical facts in 
reference to the formation of propositions and the process 
of syllogisms ; and he has supplied in his logic only a natu- 
ral history of finite thought. However much, then, this 
attaining to a consciousness of the logical operations of 
the understanding, this abstracting from the materiality 
of ordinary thought, is to be valued, the striking want in 
it of all scientific foundation and derivation must at the 
same time be recognised. The ten categories, for ex- 
ample, though discussed, as observed, in a special work, 
are simply enumerated without any assignment of a prin- 
ciple, whether of foundation or of classification. It is 
for him only a fact that there are so many categories, 
nay, they are even differently stated in different works. 
In the same way, the syllogistic figures are taken up only 
empirically ; he regards them as only modes and relations 
of formal thought, and persists in this position within 
the logic of the understanding simply, though he declares 



ARISTOTLE. 101 

the syllogism to be tlie single form of science. Neither 
in his Metaphysics nor in his Physics, does he apply the 
formal syllogistic rules which he develops in the Orga- 
non : a clear proof that he has duly wrought into his 
system neither the theory of the categories, nor his 
analytic in general. In short, his logical inquiries enter 
not into the development of his philosophical thoughts, 
but have for the most part only the value of a prelimi- 
nary linguistic investigation. 

(c.) Metaphysics. — Of all the writings of Aristotle, 
the Metaphysics present the least the appearance of a 
connected whole, but rather that of a collection of 
sketches, which follow indeed a certain main idea, but 
fail in inner union and complete development. Seven 
chief groups may be distinguished here — (1.) A criticism 
of the previous philosophical systems from the point of 
view of the four Aristotelian principles (Book I.) ; (2.) A 
statement of the aporias or philosophical preliminary 
questions (in.) ; (3.) The principle of contradiction (iv.) ; 
(4.) The definitions (v.) ; (5.) A discussion of the notion 
of substance (ovcrla), and of logical essence (the tL fy 
efocu), or of the notions matter (uXt?), form (eTSos), and of 
the composite thing [gvvoKov) that is formed of both 
(vii., vni.) ; (6.) Potentiality and actuality (ix.) ; (7.) The 
divine spirit that, unmoved itself, moves all (xn.); (8.) 
To this there is added the polemic against the Platonic 
theory of ideas and numbers, which pervades the entire 
Metaphysics, but which is more particularly the business 
of Books xni. and xiv. 

(aa.) The Aristotelian criticism of the Platonic Ideal 
Theory. — It is in Aristotle's opposition to the Platonic 
ideal theory that the specific difference of the two 
systems is to be sought. Aristotle, indeed, returns, on 
every opportunity that presents itself (especially Meta. I. 
and xni.), to this his antithesis to the Academics. Plato 
had conceived- the idea (or ideas) of all that is real, but 
the idea, if true, had still no movement for him ; it was 
not yet wrought into life and the process of nature. It 
was thus rather itself finite, had the phenomenal world, 
however much against Plato's own will, opposed to it in 
independent being, and possessed not in its own self the 
principle of this being. Aristotle means this when he 
objects to Plato that his ideas are only ' things of sense 
immortalized and eternalized, ' and that they are incom- 
petent to explain the being and becomiDg of nature. In 



102 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

order to escape these consequences lie himself attributes to 
mind an original connexion with the outward phenomena ; 
he characterizes the relation of the two as that of the 
actual to the possible, of form to matter, he conceives 
thought as the absolute reality of matter ; matter as 
thought in itself (potential). His objections to the 
Platonic theory, Aristotle reasons out in the following 
manner : — 

Leaving out of view that Plato had led no competent 
proof of the objective reality of the ideas, in independ- 
ence of the things of sense, and that his theory is un- 
verified, this theory is, in the first place, completely 
sterile, as it offers no explanatory reason of existence. 
The ideas are devoid of any special independent matter 
of contents. We need only remember how they origi- 
nate. In order to save the possibility of science, 
Plato had attempted to set up certain substances, 
independent of sense, uncoloured by its stream. But 
for this purpose, nothing else offered itself to him than 
the individual units beside him, the things of sense. 
He assumed these, therefore, but in a universalized form 
as ideas. And thus it happens that his ideas are so little 
different from the actual units of sense that participate 
in them. The ideal duality and the empirical duality 
have one and the same import. We may easily con- 
vince ourselves of this by challenging the adherents of 
the ideas to say definitely what their imperishable sub- 
stances specially are beside the things of sense which 
participate in them. The entire distinction between 
them is limited to an in itself which attaches to the 
latter : instead of a man, a horse, we have a man in him- 
self a horse in itself Only on this formal alteration does 
the ideal theory rest : the finite import (constitution of 
the object) remains, it is only expressed as an eternal 
one. This objection, that in the ideal theory the sen- 
suous is in strictness only assumed as unsensuous and 
distinguished with the predicate of immutability, is, 
as already remarked, understood by Aristotle in this 
way, that he calls the ideas, ' eternalized things of 
sense,' not as if they were actually something sen- 
suous, something in space, but because the sensuous 
individual is in them immediately enunciated as a 
universal. He compares them in this connexion to 
the gods of the anthropomorphistic popular religion. 
As these are nothing else than deified men, so those 



ARISTOTLE. 103 

are nothing else than potentiated things of nature, 
what is sensuous exalted into what is not sensuous. It 
is this ' synonymousness ' of the ideas and the correspon- 
dent things of sense, which gives to the assumption of 
the ideas the appearance of a superfluous and cumber- 
some duplication of the objects that are to be explained. 
Why should we take the same thing twice ? Why, be- 
sides the two and the three of sense, assume a two and 
three in the idea? Aristotle intimates, therefore, that 
the adherents of the ideal theory, in supposing an idea 
for every class of things in nature, and in bringing for- 
ward, by means of this theory, a double series of sen- 
suous and unsensuous substances under one and the same 
name, appear to him like men who should be of opinion 
that it is not equally easy to count with few numbers 
and with many, and should accordingly increase their 
numbers before proceeding to calculations in hand. 
Or, to take it once again, the ideal theory is a tautology, 
and as an explanation of natural existence wholly fruit- 
less. * Towards knowledge of the individual things that 
participate in the idea, these ideas themselves give no 
assistance, since, indeed, they (ideas) are not immanent in 
them, but sundered from them/ Equally barren the ideas 
are seen to be when considered in relation to the origi- 
nation and dissolution of the things of sense. They pos- 
sess not any principle of the genesis of this movement. 
There is no causality in them either to produce change or 
to explain its actual existence. In themselves immobile 
and without process, they could bring about, did any 
influence at all belong to them, no result but a complete 
standstill. According to the Phcedo, indeed, the ideas 
are causes of being as well as of becoming, but, . de- 
spite the ideas, nothing becomes without a moving force, 
and, in their separation from the subject of the becom- 
ing, the ideas are none such. This indifference of the 
ideas to the process of actuality, their unyielding remote- 
ness, is, under application of the categories potentiality 
and actuality, further described by Aristotle as the mere 
potentiality, possibility, virtuality which belongs to them 
in contrast to the actuality which fails them. The inner 
contradiction of the ideal theory is briefly this, that it 
enunciates an individual directly as a universal, and, 
conversely, the universal, the genus as what is at the 
same time numerically individual, or that it expresses the 
idea, on the one hand, as a separate specific individual, 



104 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and, on the other hand, as participant, and consequently 
as universal (generic). Although, then, the ideas are 
originally generic notions, universals, originating in the 
demonstration and fixation of the one in the many, of the 
permanent in the mutable, of the veritably beent in the 
phenomenally existent, still, being at the same time, ac- 
cording to the Platonic assumption, separate substances, 
they are quite incapable of definition. That is, neither 
definition nor derivation is possible of anything that is 
absolutely singular, a wholly peculiar individual unit ; 
and the reason is that words — and only through words 
is definition possible — are by very nature universal and 
applicable to a variety of objects, and, consequently, that 
all predicates by which I may attempt to assign the de- 
termination of any particular object, are, for this speci- 
fic object, not specific, and cannot be specific. The 
supporters of the ideal theory, then, are not in a position 
logically to determine any idea; their ideas are indefinable. 
Plato has left in complete obscurity the relation in gene- 
ral of things to the ideas. He terms the ideas arche- 
types, and supposes things to participate in them ; but 
such expressions are only hollow poetical metaphors. 
How are we to conceive this 'participation* in, this 
copying of, these patterns thus remote, absent in an alien 
region ? It is in vain to seek in Plato any definite expla- 
nation here. It is wholly unintelligible how and why 
matter comes to participate in the ideas. To explain it 
at all, recourse must be had, in addition to the ideas, to 
another and a higher principle, which should hold in it 
the cause of this ' participation ' of things, for without 
any principle of movement it is impossible to get to 
understand the 'participation.' In every case there 
must be assumed, in addition to the idea (of man, for 
example), and in addition to the sensuous manifestation 
(a certain individual man, say), and as common to both, 
a tertium, a third, in which both should be united; 
that is to say, as Aristotle usually couches this ob- 
jection, the ideal theory involves the supposition of 
a 'third man.' The immanence of the universal in the 
singular, this is the result of the Aristotelian critique of 
the ideas. However sound it was in Socrates to insist 
on the discovery of the universal as the true soul of the 
individual, and on the consequent assignment of the 
logical definition (for without the universal no science is 
possible), the Platonic theory that would transform these 



ARISTOTLE. 105 

generic notions into real, individual substances, existing 
independently and by themselves, is quite unsound. A 
universal, a genus, a species, is not a tiling that exists 
alongside of, or apart from, the singular, the individual. 
A thing and its notion cannot be separated from each 
other. With all these conclusions, Aristotle, nevertheless, 
is so little opposed to the principle of Plato (namely that 
the universal is alone the veritably beent, the truth of in- 
dividual things), that he has rather only relieved it of its 
accompanying abstraction, and more deeply reconciled 
it with the world of sense. Despite all apparent an- 
tagonism to his master, his main proposition is the same 
as Plato's namely, that the true nature of a thing (to tL 
ia-Ttv, to rl 9ju eTi>ou) is known and shown only in the 
notion. But still for him the universal, the notion, must 
be as little separated from the particular exemplification 
of it in sense, as form from matter ; and essence or sub- 
stance (oMa) in its strictest sense is for him only that 
which is not predicated of anything else, but of which all 
else is predicated — whatever, namely, is a this thing (t65€ 
Ti) y an individual thing, a special unit, not a universal. 

(bb.) The four Aristotelian principles or causes, and 
the relation of form and matter. — From the critique of the 
Platonic ideas, there directly result the two main char- 
acteristics of the Aristotelian system, and which to- 
gether constitute its cardinal point ; they are form (etdos) 
and matter (iiXrj). Aristotle, for the most part, it is 
true, when he aims at completeness, enumerates four 
metaphysical principles or causes, — the formal, the mate- 
rial, the efficient, and the final. In the case of a house, 
for example, the building materials are the matter, the 
idea of it the form, the efficient cause the builder, and 
the actual house the end (final cause). These four prin- 
ciples of all being, however, will be found on closer 
inspection to reduce themselves to the single antithesis 
of matter and form. In the first place, the notion of the 
efficient cause coincides with that of the two other ideal 
principles (form and end). The efficient cause, namely, 
is what conducts the transition of potentiality into actu- 
ality (entelechie), or the realization of matter into form. 
In all movement, however, of an unactual into an actual, 
the latter is the logical (notional) prius, and the logical 
(or notional) motive of the movement itself. The effi- 
cient cause of matter is consequently the form. Thus man 
is the efficient cause of man ; the form of the statue in 



106 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the understanding (artistic phantasy) of the sculptor is 
the cause of the movement through which the statue 
comes into being ; health in the mind of the physician 
precedes the process of cure. In a certain way, therefore, 
health is the medical art, and the form of a house archi- 
tectural art. But the efficient, or first cause, is equally 
identical with the final cause or end, for this (the end) is 
the motive of all becoming and of all movement. The 
builder is the efficient cause of the house, but the efficient 
cause of the builder is the end to be accomplished, the 
house. In these examples it is already evident that the 
principles of form and end also coincide, so far as both 
are conjoined in the notion of actuality (ivtpyeia). For 
the end of everything is its completed being, its notion, 
or its form, the development into full actuality of what- 
ever is potentially contained in it. The final cause of 
the hand is its notion ; that of the seed the tree, which 
is the true nature of the seed. There remain to us, 
therefore, only the two principles, which pass not into 
each other, matter and form. 

Matter is, for Aristotle, conceived in its abstraction 
from form, as what is without predicate, determination, 
distinction ; what is permanent subject in all becoming, 
and assumes the most contradictory forms ; what how- 
ever in its own being is different from everything that is 
become, and has in itself no definite form whatever ; 
what then is everything in possibility, but nothing in 
actuality. As the wood the bench, and the brass the 
statue, so there underlies every determinate a materia 
prima, a first matter. Aristotle takes credit to himself 
for having resolved with this notion of matter the much- 
vexed question of how anything can originate, inasmuch 
as what is can neither originate from what is, nor from 
what is not. For not from what directly is not, but 
only from what in actuality is not, that is to say, only 
from what potentially is, can anything originate. Pos- 
sible (potential) being is as little non-being as it is actu- 
ality. Every existing thing of nature is therefore a 
possibility that has attained to actuality. Matter is 
to Aristotle, accordingly, a much more positive substrate 
than to Plato, who pronounced it the absolutely non- 
beent. This explains how Aristotle could conceive 
matter, in contradistinction to form, as a positive nega- 
tive, as a counterpart to form, and designate it as posi- 
tive negation (erects). 



ARISTOTLE. 107 

As matter with potentiality, so form coincides with ac- 
tuality. It is that which converts undistinguished, inde- 
terminate matter into a definite, a this {r6de ri), an actual ; 
it is the specific virtue, the completed activity, the soul 
of everything. What Aristotle calls form, then, is not to 
be confounded with what is to us perhaps/apoz^ An am- 
putated hand, for example, has still the external shape of a 
hand, but to Aristotle it is only a hand in matter, not in 
form ; an actual hand, a hand in form, is only what can 
fulfil the special function of a hand. Pure form is what, 
without matter, in truth is (rd ri fy elvai), or the notion of 
true being, the pure notion. Such pure form exists not, 
however, in the kingdom of definite being : every given 
being, every individual substance (ov<ria), everything that 
is a this, is a compound rather of matter and form, a vivo- 
\ov. Matter, then, it is that prevents the existent from 
being pure form, pure notion ; it is the ground of the 
becoming of plurality, multiplicity, and contingency ; it 
is at the same time what prescribes to science its limit. 
For an individual thing cannot be known in proportion 
as it contains matter. From this it follows, however, 
that the antithesis between matter and form is a fluent 
one. What in one reference is matter, is in another 
form. Wood in relation to the finished house is matter, 
in relation to the growing tree, form ; the soul in rela- 
tion to the body is form, in relation to reason, which is 
the form of the form (etdos eldovs), it is matter. In this 
way, the totality of existence must constitute a gra- 
duated scale, of which the lowest degree will be a first 
matter (irpdirr) fjXrj) entirely without form, and the highest 
a last form entirely without matter (pure form — the 
absolute, divine spirit). What finds itself between these 
extremes will be in the one direction matter, in the other 
form, which amounts to a continual self -translation of the 
former into the latter. This (the foundation of the Aris- 
totelian theory of nature) is the conception, — first come 
upon in the analytic method of observing nature, — that 
all nature is an eternal graduated conversion of matter into 
form, an eternal breaking out into life, on the part of this 
inexhaustible primeval substrate, in higher and higher 
ideal formations. That all matter should become form, all 
possibility actuality, all being knowing, this is, indeed, at 
once the impracticable postulate of reason and the aim 
of all becoming — impracticable, since Aristotle expressly 
maintains that matter, as privation of form, as <rript\cvs, 



108 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

can never wholly attain to actuality, nor consequently to 
understanding. So, then, the Aristotelian system ends 
also in an insurmountable dualism of matter and form. 

(cc). Potentiality and Actuality (8\jpa/xts and £p£pyeia). — 
The relation of matter to form has, logically taken, mani- 
fested itself as the relation of potentiality to actuality. 
Aristotle first invented these terms (in their philosophi- 
cal sense), and they are what is most characteristic of his 
system. In the movement of potential being into actual 
being we have the explicit notion of becoming, as in the 
four principles generally an explication of this notion into 
its moments. The Aristotelian system, consequently, is 
one of becoming ; and thus in him (as in Plato the prin- 
ciple of the Eleatics), there returns, but in richer and con- 
creter form, the principle of Heraclitus. Aristotle, then, 
has made an important step here towards subjugation 
of the Platonic dualism. If, as possibility of form, mat- 
ter is reason in process of becoming, then the antithesis 
between idea and world of sense is at least in principle 
or potentially surmounted, so far as it is one single being, 
but only on different stages, that exhibits itself in both, 
in matter as well as in form. The relation of the poten- 
tial to the actual, Aristotle illustrates by the relation of 
the raw material to the finished article, of the proprietor 
to the builder, of the sleeper to the waker. The seed is the 
tree potentially, the tree the seed actually ; a potential 
philosopher is the philosopher not philosophizing ; the 
better general is potentially the conqueror even before 
the battle ; space potentially is divisible ad infinitum : 
in general that is potential, whatever possesses a prin- 
ciple of movement, development, change ; whatever, un- 
hindered from without, will through its own self be. 
Actuality or entelechie, again, applies to the accom- 
plished act, the attained goal, the consummated reality 
(the mature tree, e.g., is the entelechie of the seed), 
that actuosity in which the action and its completion 
coincide, as to think, to see (he thinks and he has thought, 
he sees and he has seen, are identical) ; whereas in acts 
which involve a becoming, as to learn, to go, to get well, 
the two (the act and its completion) are divided. In this 
conception of the form (or idea) as actuality or entele- 
chie, — in its connexion, that is, with the movement of 
becoming, — there lies the chief distinction between the 
system of Aristotle and the system of Plato. To Plato 
the idea is stable, self-subsistent being, the opposite of 



ARISTOTLE. 109 

motion and becoming ; to Aristotle it is the eternal pro- 
duct of becoming, eternal energy, activity in completed 
actuality, the goal that is in every instant attained by 
the movement of the in-itself (potentiality) to the for -it- 
self (actuality), not a fabricated and finished being, but 
such as is eternally being produced. 

(dd. ) The absolute, divine spirit. — A ristotle has attempted, 
from various points of view, but especially in connexion 
with the relation of potentiality and actuality, to deter- 
mine the idea of the absolute spirit, or as he also names 
it, the first mover, (a.) The cosmological form. — The 
actual is always earlier than the potential, not only in 
its notion — for I can affirm power only in connexion 
with its activity — but also in time, for the potential be- 
comes actual only through an actuating something (the 
uneducated becomes educated through the educated) : 
this leads to the inference of a first mover, who is pure 
actuosity. Or, motion, becoming, a causal series, is only 
possible, if a principle of motion, a mover, pre-exists ; this 
principle of motion, however, must be such that its very 
nature is actuality, since what only potentially exists may 
quite as well not pass into actuality, and not be, there- 
fore, a principle of movement. All becoming postulates, 
consequently, an eternal, unbecome Being, who, himself 
unmoved, is principle of movement, the first mover. 
(b.) Ontological form. — Even from the very notion of po- 
tentiality it results that the eternal and necessarily exis- 
tent Being cannot be merely potential. For what 
potentially is, may as well not be as be ; but what pos- 
sibly is not, is perishable. What, therefore, is abso- 
lutely imperishable is not potential, but actual. Or, were 
potentiality the first, there might possibly exist nothing 
at all, which contradicts the notion of the absolute, to be 
that which cannot not be. (c.) Moral form. — Potentiality 
is always the possibility of the opposite. Who has the 
power to be well has also the power to be ill : in actu- 
ality, again, no one is at once well and ill. Consequently 
actuality is better than potentiality, and the former alone 
accrues to the Eternal. (d.) So far as the relation of 
potentiality and actuality is identical with that of mat- 
ter and form, these arguments for the existence of a 
Being who is pure actuality, may be put in this shape 
also : — The supposition of an absolutely formless matter 
(irpwTTj VXtj) postulates that of an absolutely matterless 
form {irpCorov etfos) at the other extreme. And since the 



110 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

notion of form divides into the three fundamental dis- 
tinctions of the efficient, the notional, and the final cause, 
the eternal Being is also, similarly, absolute efficient 
principle (first-mover, irp&rov klvqvv), absolute notion 
(purely intelligible, pure tI i)v elvac), and absolute end 
(primitive good). 

All other predicates of the prime mover or supreme 
principle result from these premises with rigorous neces- 
sity. He is one, since the ground of the plurality, the 
multiplicity of being, lies in matter, and he is unparti- 
cipant of matter. He is immovable and immutable, as 
otherwise he were not possibly the absolute mover, the 
cause of all process. As actuose self-end, as entele- 
chie, he is life. As absolutely immaterial, and free from 
nature, he is at once intelligence and intelligible. He is 
active, that is, he is thinking intelligence, because he 
is in his very nature pure actuality. He is intelligence 
that thinks its own self, because the divine thought can- 
not have its actuality out of itself, and because, if he 
were the thought of another than himself, he could reach 
actuality only by a necessary commencement from poten- 
tiality. Hence Aristotle's famous definition of the abso- 
lute, that it is the thought of thought (p6tj<tls poTfjo-eus), 
the personal unity of thinking and thought, of knowing 
and known, the absolute subject-object. Meta. xii. 7 
contains a rehearsal of these attributes of the divine spirit, 
and an almost hymnic description of the ever-blessed God, 
who, in eternal peace, in eternal self -fruition, knows him- 
self as the absolute truth, and is in want neither of 
action nor of virtue. 

As appears from this statement, Aristotle, although 
led to it through many consequences of his system, and 
in many movements preparing for it, has not completely 
deduced the idea of his absolute spirit, and still less 
satisfactorily reconciled it with the conditioning bases and 
presuppositions of his philosophy. It makes its appear- 
ance in the twelfth book of the Metaphysics quite asser- 
torically, nay unexpectedly, without the aid of any 
further induction. It suffers, too, under important diffi- 
culties. Why the ultimate ground of movement, which 
properly is all that his absolute spirit is, must be also 
thought as a personal being, it is impossible to see. It 
is impossible to see also how there can be something that 
is a moving cause and yet itself unmoved ; a cause of all 
becoming, that is, of all origination and decease, and yet 



ARISTOTLE. Ill 

itself permanent, self -identical energy ; a principle of 
movement, and yet itself without potentiality : for what 
moves must at least stand in a relation of action and re- 
action with what is moved. On the whole, Aristotle has 
not, as already appears from these contradictions, with 
completeness and consistency established the relation be- 
tween God and the world. Since indeed he characterizes 
the absolute spirit one-sidedly only as contemplative theo- 
retical reason, and excludes from him, as the perfected 
end, all action (which were to presuppose an unperfected 
end), any right motive of activity in regard to the world 
fails. In his only theoretical relation, he is not even 
truly the first mover ; extra-mundane and unmoved, as 
in essential nature he is, he enters not at all with his 
activity into the life of the world ; and as on its side 
matter is never quite resolved into form, there manifests 
itself here too the unreconciled dualism between the 
divine spirit and the incognisable in-itself (potentiality) 
of matter. The objections which Aristotle makes to the 
god of Anaxagoras apply in part to his own. 

4. The Aristotelian Physics. — The physics of Aris- 
totle, taking up the largest part of his writings, con- 
tinue the consideration of the rise of matter into form, 
of the graduated series which nature, a living being, de- 
scribes in order to become an individual soul. All pro- 
cess, namely, has an end in view ; an end, however, is 
form, and the absolute form is the spirit. It is with due 
consequence, then, that Aristotle recognises the end and 
centre of terrestrial nature in the realized form, man, 
and man-male. Everything sublunary else is, as it were, 
only nature's failure to produce a male man, a surplus- 
age due to the inability of nature always to master 
matter and mould it into form. Whatever attains not to 
the universal end of nature must be regarded as defec- 
tive, and is in strictness an exception or an abortion. 
Thus it even appears a false birth to Aristotle when the 
child resembles not the father ; and the birth of a female 
child is for him only a smaller degree of falsity, which 
arises from this that the procreating man, as formative 
principle, possessed not strength enough. In comparison 
with man, Aristotle regards woman generally as some- 
thing maimed, and the other animals he finds in a greater 
degree deficient. Did nature act with full consciousness, 
these imperfect and incompetent formations of nature, 
these failures, were inexplicable ; but she is an artist that 



112 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

works only on unconscious instinct, and completes not her 
work with clear perception or rational reflection. 

(a.) In his physical books, Aristotle considers the uni- 
versal conditions of all natural existence — motion, space, 
time. These physical principles he reduces, also, to the 
metaphysical principles of potentiality and actuality. 
Motion is defined, accordingly, as the action of what 
potentially is, and consequently as mediatrix between 
potential being and entirely realized actuality. Space is 
defined as the possibility of motion, and possesses the 
quality, therefore, of being — potentially, not actually, — 
divisible ad infinitum. Time, as the measure of motion, 
equally divisible ad infinitum, and numerically expressible, 
is the numbering of motion in reference to an earlier and 
a later. All three are infinite, but the infinite that dis- 
plays itself in them is only potentially, not actually, a 
whole : it contains not, but is contained, which is misun- 
derstood by those who are accustomed to extol the infi- 
nite as if it embraced all and contained all, because it 
possesses a certain similarity to a whole. 

(b.) Aristotle derives from the notion of motion his 
theory of the entire universe as set out in his books De 
Cwlo. As uninterrupted, uniform, and self-complete, 
the circular is the most perfect motion. The world, then, 
as a whole, is conditioned by this motion ; it is globe- 
shaped and self-contained. For the same reason, how- 
ever, — namely, that the motion which returns into itself is 
better than any other, — that sphere in this globe-shaped 
universe is the better which is participant of the more 
perfect movement, and placed consequently in the peri- 
phery, while that is the worse which is disposed around 
the centre. The former is the heaven, the latter the 
earth, and between both there is also the sphere of the 
planets. Heaven, as seat of spheral movement and of im- 
perishable order, is nearest to the first moving cause, and 
stands directly under its influence ; it consists not of 
perishable matter, but of higher element, the ether ; and 
in it the ancients sought the godhead, guided by a true 
tradition of vanished wisdom. Its parts, the stars, are 
impassive, changeless, and eternal beings ; who, occupied 
for ever in untroubled employment, have received the 
better part ; and are, though not capable of being clearly 
understood, certainly much more divine than man. 
Under the sphere of the fixed stars, comes the lower 
sphere of the planets, among which x\risfcotle enumerates. 



ARISTOTLE. 113 

besides the five usually acknowledged by the ancients, 
the sun and the moon. This sphere is less near in posi- 
tion to what is perfect. Unlike that of the fixed stars, 
it is moved, not to the right, but in an opposite direction, 
and in oblique courses. It, too, possesses its divine 
movers, who also are spiritual and immortal beings. 
Lastly, in the middle of the world there is the earth ; the 
farthest removed from the prime mover, and the least 
participant of divinity consequently ; the sphere — under 
influence of the planets, and especially of the sun — of a 
constant interchange of origin and decease, but exhibit- 
ing even in this infinite process, a copy of the eternity of 
heaven. There are thus assumed as necessary for the 
explanation of nature three species of beings, represent- 
ing, at the same time, three degrees of perfection : an 
immaterial being, that, itself unmoved, imparts move- 
ment, namely, the absolute spirit or God ; secondly, a 
being that moves and is moved — though not without 
matter — eternally, imperishably, in a constantly uni- 
form circle, the super-terrestrial region of heaven ; and 
lastly, in the lowest sphere, the perishable beings of 
earth, to which belongs only the passive rdle of receiving 
movement. 

(c.) Nature in the stricter sense, as scene of elemental 
action, exhibits to us a progressive transition of the 
elements into plants, and of plants into animals. 
The lowest step is occupied by the inanimate things of 
nature, pure products of the intermixing elements, and 
possessing their entelechie consequently only in the 
particular relations of the combination of these ele- 
ments ; whilst their energy, on the other hand, expresses 
itself only in their tendency towards a position in the 
universe adapted to them, which gained, they there rest. 
Such mere external entelechie is not the property of 
animate existences ; in them the motion by which they 
attain to actuality dwells inwardly as organizing prin- 
ciple, and continues as conservative activity to act in 
them, even after complete organization ; in short, they 
possess soul, for soul is the entelechie of an organic 
body. Soul we find operative in plants only as force 
of conservation and nutrition ; the plant has no other 
function or vocation than to nourish itself and pro- 
pagate its kind. Tn animals, which also exhibit a gra- 
duated series according to the mode of their propagation, 
the soul appears as sensitive. Animals have senses, and 

H 



114 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

are capable of locomotion. The human soul, finally, ia 
nutritive, sensitive, and cognitive. 

(<£) Marty as goal of universal nature, is the central and 
combining ganglion of the various grades in which the 
life of nature exhibits itself. The classifying principle of 
animate nature in general, therefore, will be necessarily 
that also of the faculties of the soul. If nutrition (vege- 
tation) fell to plants, sensation to animals, and locomo- 
tion to the higher animals, all three belong to the human 
soul. Of these the one preceding is always condition of 
necessity and presupposition in time to the one succeeding, 
and the soul itself is properly nothing else than the unifi- 
cation of these various functions of organic life into a single 
common designf ul activity, the designing unity or ente- 
lechie of the organic body. The soul is related to the body 
as form to matter ; it is animating principle. Simply for 
this reason the soul cannot be thought without the body; 
neither can it exist by itself, and with the body it 
ceases to be. It is different, however, with the fourth 
power, with thought or reason (povs), which constitutes 
what is specific in man. This is essentially different 
from the soul, it is no product of the lower faculties, it 
is not related to them as mere higher developmental 
stage, as soul to body perhaps, as end to instrument, as 
actuality to possibility, as form to matter ; but, as pure 
intellectual principle, it requires not the intervention of 
any bodily organ, it stands not in connexion with the 
bodily functions, it is absolutely simple, immaterial, self- 
subsistent, it is what is divine in man ; it comes, as being 
no result of lower processes, from elsewhere into the 
body, and is equally again separable from it. There cer- 
tainly exists a connexion between thought and sensation; 
for the sensations, at first externally separated according 
to the various organs of sense, meet inwardly in a 
centre, a common sense, where they are transformed into 
images and conceptions, and further again into thoughts. 
And it might seem from this as if thought were only a 
result of sensation, as if the intelligence were only pas- 
sively determined, nay, Aristotle himself distinguishes 
between an active and a passive (receptive) reason, 
which latter is only gradually developed into thinking 
cognition. (In place here is the proposition erroneously 
ascribed to Aristotle, Nihil est in intellectu, quod non 
fuerit in sensu, as well as the widely known, but much 
misunderstood, comparison of the soul to a tabula 



ARISTOTLE. 115 

rasa. This latter means only that as the tabula rasa is 
a book poteatially but not actually, so human reason 
is at first not actually but potentially cognitive ; or 
thought possesses the universal notions within itself in 
principle, so far as it is capable of forming them, but not 
in actuality, not definitely developed.) But this passivity 
presupposes rather an activity ; for if thought in its 
actuality, as cognition, becomes all forms, and conse- 
quently all things, it must make itself all that it becomes, 
and the passive reason has therefore an active one as 
moving principle behind it, by means of which it be- 
comes that which in itself it is. This active reason is 
reason in its purity, which as such is independent of and 
unaffected by matter, and consequently even on the death 
of the body is unconcerned, and, as universal reason, 
continues eternal and immortal. Thus here, too, the 
Aristotelian dualism breaks out. Obviously, this active 
intelligence is related to the soul as God to nature ; the 
sides stand in no essential mutual relation. As the 
divine spirit becomes not truly part of the universal life, 
neither does the human spirit become truly part of the 
life of the senses ; though defined as immaterial and in- 
susceptible of outer influence, as soul it is still to be 
supposed connected with matter ; though pure, self-cog- 
nising form, it is still to be supposed different from the 
divine spirit, which has been similarly characterized ; the 
deficiency of conciliation as well on the one side as the 
other, the human as well as the divine, is in these cir- 
cumstances not to be mistaken. 

5. Aristotle's Ethics. — (a.) Relation of the ethics to 
the physics. — Led here, too, by his tendency to nature, 
Aristotle has united ethics more closely with physics than 
his two predecessors Socrates and Plato did. If Plato 
found it impossible to discourse of the good in the affairs 
of man without being obliged to introduce the idea of the 
good in itself, Aristotle, on the contrary, held that the 
good in itself, the idea of the good, was of no assistance 
towards a knowledge of the good that was practicable in 
actual life, the good for us. Only the latter, morality in 
the life of man, not the good on the great scale as in re- 
lation to the universe, was for him the object of ethics. 
Hence Aristotle prefers to consider the good in its rela- 
tion to the actual constitution of man, as the aim 
appointed by nature herself ; he conceives the moral 
element as flower, as etherealization, spiritualization of 



116 niSTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the physical, rather than as something purely intellec- 
tual ; virtue as normal development of natural instinct 
rather than as dependent on knowledge. That man is a 
political animal by nature, this for him is the premiss and 
the fundamental presupposition for any theory of the 
state. This conjunction of the ethical with the physical 
element explains the polemic of Aristotle against the 
Socratic notion of virtue. Socrates, looking for the 
foundation of morals in the action of intelligence as in 
superiority to sense, had set virtue and knowledge as 
one. But this, in the opinion of Aristotle, were to de- 
stroy the pathological moment that is planted by nature 
herself in every moral action. It is not reason that is 
the first principle of virtue, but the natural sensations, 
inclinations, and appetites of the soul, without which 
action were not to be thought. The provision of nature, 
the impulse which in the beginning instinctively seeks 
natural good, and to which moral insight is only subse- 
quently added, this is the first ; only from natural virtue 
does that of morality arise. Aristotle, for the same 
reason, also disputes the teachableness of virtue. It is not 
through cultivation of knowledge, according to him, but 
through exercise — exercise directing natural inclination 
and impulse to the good, accustoming them to the good, 
weaning them from the bad — that virtue is realized. 
We become virtuous through the practice of virtue, as 
through the practice of music and architecture we be- 
come musicians and architects. Virtue is no mere know- 
ledge of the good, but confirmation in it, conviction, 
principle. But principle is only the result of usage to 
the good, and that requires again persistent exercise 
and perpetual discipline. Judgment is certainly neces- 
sary for knowledge of the good, and its application in 
detail ; but it cannot produce a virtuous will ; nay, it 
is rather conditioned by the latter, for a vicious will 
corrupts and misleads judgment. Man, then, is good 
through three things : through nature, through habit, 
and through reason. Aristotle is, in these respects, 
directly opposed to Socrates. Whilst the latter, viewing 
morality and nature as opposed, made moral action the 
result of rational insight ; the former, holding both to be 
steps of development, makes rational insight in moral 
things a result of moral action. 

(b.) The summum bonum. — All action has an end in 
view; but every end cannot be only again means to 



ARISTOTLE. 117 

another end ; there must be a last and highest end, there 
must be something to be striven to for its own sake, 
something that is good absolutely, something that is 
best. We are at least agreed on the name of this, 
which name is Happiness. But about the notion of 
happiness there is still question. If it is asked, What 
constitutes happiness ? — the answer can only be, That 
must depend on the peculiar nature of man, and consist 
in a course of action which, flowing from this peculiar 
nature, exalts it into such perfect actuality as brings 
with it the feeling of entire satisfaction. But sensuous 
feeling is not what is peculiar to man, for this he shares 
with the lower animals ; it is intelligence. The pleasure 
derived from the gratification of sense may constitute the 
bliss of the brute, then ; but it is certainly not that 
which is essential to man. What is specially human is 
the exercise of reason rather. Man, by nature and in- 
telligence, is formed for action, for rational action, for 
rational application of his natural powers and faculties. 
That is his destination and his happiness ; to the active, 
action, the unobstructed, successfully continued exercise 
of that activity to which nature calls, is always highest 
and best. Happiness, therefore, is such a well-being as 
is also well-doing, and such a well-doing as yields, in 
unobstructed energy and natural activity, the highest 
satisfaction. Action and pleasure are inseparably united 
then, by a natural bond, and constitute in their union, if 
carried out throughout an entire life, happiness. Hence 
the Aristotelian definition of happiness, that it is a per- 
fect activity in a perfect life. 

But if from this description, Aristotle appears to have 
considered action in accordance with nature sufficient for 
happiness and sufficient for itself, he does not, at the 
same time, conceal from himself the dependence of hap- 
piness on competent means and other advantages, the pos- 
session of which is not necessarily within our power. He 
declares, indeed, that moderate means suffice, and that 
only unusually great misfortunes are worth regarding, 
but he holds at the same time that riches, friends, chil- 
dren, noble birth, personal beauty, etc., are more or less 
necessary conditions of happiness, which, then, depends in 
part on contingencies. This moment of the Aristotelian 
theory has its foundation naturally in his empirical ten- 
dencies. Carefully pondering every consideration which 
universal experience appears to furnish, he pronounces 



118 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

exclusively neither for virtue and rational action nor 
for external fortune, because fact testifies to the condi- 
tionedness of the one by the other ; and he is in this free 
from the one-sidedness of later authorities, who deny to 
externality any application in happiness. 

(c.) Notion of virtue. — As results from the Aristotelian 
polemic against Socrates, virtue is the product of fre- 
quently repeated moral action ; it is a quality won 
through exercise, an acquired moral ability of the soul. 
The nature of this ability may be characterized as fol- 
lows : — Every act accomplishes something as its work ; 
but a work is imperfect if either in defect or excess. 
The act itself, therefore, will be similarly imperfect either 
by defect or excess ; nor will an act be perfect unless it 
attain to a right proportion, to the due middle between 
too much and too little. Virtue in general, then, may 
be defined as observation of the due mean in action, not 
the arithmetical mean, the mean in itself, but the mean 
for us. What, namely, is enough for one man, is not so 
for another. The virtue of a man is one thing, but that 
of a wife, a child, a slave, quite another. In like man- 
ner there must be consideration of time, circumstances, 
and relations. To that extent, indeed, the determina- 
tion of the due mean will always involve uncertainty. 
But in the absence of any exact and infallible prescript, 
it is practical judgment that must pronounce ; and in 
effect that is the due mean which the man of understand- 
ing considers such. 

That there must be as many virtues as there are rela- 
tions of life, follows of itself from the very notion of 
virtue. As man, too, falls ever into new circumstances, 
in which it is often hard to determine the proper 
course of action, any exact enumeration of the various 
particular virtues is impossible (in contrast to Plato), 
and therefore not to be discussed. Only so far as 
there are certain constant relations in life will it be 
possible to assign also certain leading virtues. One con- 
stant human relation, for example, is that of pleasure and 
pain. The moral mean in this reference, then, or neither 
to fear pain, nor yet not to fear it, will be fortitude. 
The due mean in regard to pleasure, again, as between 
apathy and greed, will be temperance. In social life the 
mean between the doing of wrong and the suffering of 
wrong, between selfishness and weakness, is justice. In 
the same way many other virtues may be characterized ; 



ARISTOTLE. 119 

and it can be demonstrated in all of them that they oc- 
cupy the middle between two vices, which are opposed 
to each other, the one by defect, the other by excess. 
The details of the Aristotelian scheme here possess much 
psychological and practical value, but less philosophical 
Aristotle derives the notions of his virtues from current 
speech rather than from the realization of any classifying 
principle ; his specification of the virtues of practical life 
remains in particular destitute of any systematic deduc- 
tion and arrangement. The most scientific perhaps is his 
classification of virtues into ethical and dianoetical, that 
is, into such as concern the affections and passions, and 
such as concern the intellect, theoretical or practical. 
The latter as the virtues of vois, of what is highest in 
man, are superior in his estimation to the former ; wis- 
dom, Sreupia, is what is best and noblest ; and life in it, 
philosophy, the supreme degree of felicity. But precisely 
in this class of virtues the criterion of a mean is found to 
be inapplicable ; they stand quite unconnectedly beside 
each other, in the same dualistic manner in which reason 
stands to the other faculties of the soul. 

(d.) T/i€ State* — Neither virtue nor happiness, accord- 
ing to Aristotle, can be attained by the individual him- 
self. Moral development and moral activity, as well as 
the procuring of the necessary external means, are con- 
ditioned by ?■ regulated life in common, within which the 
individual obtains education in the good, the protection 
of the law, the assistance of others, and opportunity for 
the practice of virtue. Even by nature man is born for 
a life in common ; he is a political being ; life for him is 
only possible with his fellows. The state, then, is higher 
than the individual higher than the family ; individuals 
are only accidental parts of the political whole. Aris- 
totle at the same time is far from entertaining the abs- 
tract conception of this relation which belongs to Plato ; 
the latter's politics, rather, he expressly opposes. With 
him also the business of the state is to rear its citizens 
into good men, to raise human life into its perfection ; 
but without prejudice to the natural rights of the indi- 
vidual and the family, of the thine and the mine, of per- 
sonal liberty. The state, he says, is not unity, but 
essentially plurality of individuals and smaller communi- 
ties ; this it has to recognise, and it has to effect also In- 
law and constitution that virtue, humanity, shall become 
as universal as possible, as well as that political power 



1 20 HI ST OR Y OF PHIL OSOPHY. 

shall remain in the hands of the virtuous citizens. Of 
the various political forms, Aristotle gives the preference 
to constitutional monarchy and aristocracy, that is, to 
the state, in which not riches and not number of heads 
rule, but all such citizens as are possessed of competent 
property, as have been educated in all moral integrity, 
and as are capable of protecting and administering the 
whole. That state is the best in which the virtue, 
whether of one or of many, governs. For the rest, Aris- 
totle will not support any political form as the only true 
one. The question, he thinks, is not of any political 
ideal, but of what is most advisable at the time, under 
the given natural, climatical, geographical, economical, 
intellectual, and moral relations. Thus here, too, he is 
true to the character of his entire philosophy — critically 
and reflectingly to advance, that is, only on the ground 
of experience, and, despairing of the attainment of any 
absolute good or true, to keep in view what are relatively 
such, namely, the probable and the practicable. 

6. The Peripatetic School. — The school of Aristotle, 
named Peripatetic, can, in consequence of the relative want 
of independency in its philosophizing, which accordingly 
was not of great or universal influence, be only mentioned 
here. Theophrastus, Eudemus, Strato are the most cele- 
brated leaders of it. In the usual manner of philosophical 
schools, it restricted itself almost entirely to the explica- 
tion and exacter completion of the Aristotelian system. 
Any attempts to extend it concerned, in view of its ten- 
dency to the cultivation of material knowledge, natu- 
rally only the empirical spheres, that of physics especi- 
ally, with neglect and disregard of the more speculative 
principles. Strato, the ' physicist,' went the farthest 
in this direction ; he abandoned the dualism of Aristotle 
between the intelligent and the natural principle of 
things, and upheld nature as the one, sole, all-productive 
(even of thought), all-formative might of existence. 

7. Transition to the Post- Aristotelian Philosophy. 
— The productive power of Grecian philosophy is, contem- 
poraneously and in connexion with the general decline of 
Grecian life and intellect, exhausted with Aristotle. In- 
stead of the great and universal systems of a Plato and 
an Aristotle, we have now one-sided subjective systems, 
correspondent to the general breach between the subject 
and the objective world, which characterizes, in political, 
religious, and social life, this last epoch of Greece, the 



ARISTOTLE. 121 

time after Alexander the Great. The principle of sub- 
jectivity, that first showed itself in the Sophists, stands 
now after long struggles triumphant over the ruiDS of 
Grecian politics and Grecian art. The individual has 
emancipated himself from society and the state. The 
simple trust of the subject in the given world is com- 
pletely at an end ; the question henceforward is of the 
realization and satisfaction of the individual subject, now 
autonomic and secluded to himself. This progressive 
course of the universal spirit is also seen in philosophy. 
It, too, is no longer handled in a purely scientific, any more 
than in a purely political, interest ; it becomes rather 
means for the subject, and aims to procure him, what is 
no longer possible on the part of the sinking religion and 
morality of the state, a philosophical conviction in reference 
to the highest religious, moral, and philosophical problems, 
a fixed theory of the universe for life and action, acquired, 
too, only through free thought. All now, even logic and 
physics, is looked at from this practical point of view ; 
the former shall extend to the subject a secure know- 
ledge to raise him above all disquieting doubt ; the latter 
shall supply the necessary explanations in regard to the 
ultimate grounds of existence, God, nature, humanity, in 
order that man may know how to relate himself to all 
things, what to fear or hope from the world, and in what 
to place his happiness in accordance with the nature of 
things. In one respect, consequently, the Post-Aristo- 
telian systems denote a spiritual progress ; they are in 
earnest with philosophy, which is to be in place now of 
religion and tradition, which is to afford truth for life 
itself, which is to be creed, dogma, conviction, by which 
the subject shall consistently determine his entire life 
and action, in which he shall find his peace, his happiness. 
And the result is that now above all things certainty is 
aimed at, definitive knowledge. The effort is towards a 
fixed foundation ; the transcendentalism of the Platonic 
idealism, and the hypothetical philosophizing of Aristotle, 
are abandoned ; position is taken on the realistic terrain 
of immediate outer and inner experience in order to reach 
thence a theory of things that shall be logically estab- 
lished, and that shall leave nothing undecided. The en- 
deavour in particular is to abolish the dualism of the 
Platonic o -Aristotelian philosophy, and finally solve the 
problem of the reduction of all the differences aDd con- 
trarieties of existence, subject and object, spirit and 



122 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

matter, to a single ultimate ground. Philosophy shall 
explain all ; nowhere shall there be left any hiatus, any 
uncertainty, any halfness. On the other hand, again, 
there fails even so to the Post-Aristotelian philosophy, 
all simple scientific devotion to the object ; it is a dog- 
matism that demands truth only for the subject, and is 
therefore one-sided. It no longer allows free scope to 
the interest itself, to cognition, but it accentuates the 
subjective consequence of thought ; it seeks truth in the 
consequent realization of a single principle throughout 
the universal sphere of existence. Hence there presents 
itself opposite this dogmatism, and with equal decision, 
a scepticism that denies the possibility of all real know- 
ledge, and in which the negative tendencies of the 
Sophistic and Megaric eristic are developed up to their 
extremest consequences. 

The chief system of the Post-Aristotelian period is 
Stoicism. In it subjectivity appears as universal, think- 
ing subjectivity (compare xi. 6). Precisely this over- 
mastering grasp of the universality of subjectivity, of 
thought, and in superiority to all that is particular and 
individual, it adopts for principle both in theory and 
practice. Every particular existential detail is only pro- 
duct of the all-reason that lives and works throughout 
the system of the universe ; reason, one and universal, 
is the essential principle of things. Thus, too, the voca- 
tion of man is no other than to be universal subjectivity 
exalted above every circumstance, and to seek his well- 
being only in a life according to nature and reason, not 
in external things, or individual enjoyment. The direct 
contrary of this is maintained by Epicureanism. In it 
the subject retires into the individuality of pleasure, into 
the bliss of philosophical repose, enjoying the present, 
free from care and inordinate desire, and interested in 
the objective world only so far as it extends means 
for the satisfaction of his individuality proper. Scep- 
ticism agrees with these two systems in aiming at the 
undisturbedness and unmovedness of the subject by 
anything external ; but it would attain this in negative 
wise, through indifference to the objective world, through 
resignation of all definite knowledge and particular will. 

The same character of subjectivity, finally, is exhibited 
by the last of the ancient philosophical systems, Neo- Plato- 
nism ; for here, too, the exaltation of the subject to the 
absolute forms the cardinal point of the system. Even, 



STOICISM. 123 

indeed, when Neo-Platonism speculates objectively in 
regard to God and his relation to the finite, this, too, 
has its motive in the desire to demonstrate the graduated 
transition from the absolute object to the personality of 
man. Here, too, then, the dominant principle is the in- 
terest of subjectivity, and the greater wealth of objective 
specifications has its ground only in the enlargement of 
subjectivity into the absolute. 

XVII.— Stoicism. 

THE founder of the Stoic School is Zeno, born in 
Citium, a town of Cyprus, about the year 340, not 
of pure Greek, but of Phoenician extraction. Deprived 
of his property by shipwreck, but impelled as well by 
inclination, he took refuge in philosophy. He was pupil 
first of Crates the Cynic, then of Stilpo the Megaric, and 
lastly of Polemo the Academic. After having passed 
twenty years in this manner, convinced at length of the 
necessity of a new philosophy, he opened, in an arcade at 
Athens, a school of his own. This arcade was named, from 
the paintings of Polygnotus with which it was decorated, 
the * many-coloured portico ' (Stoa Pcecile) ; whence those 
who attended the new school were called ' philosophers of 
the Porch.' Zeno is said to have presided over the Stoa 
for fifty- eight years, and to have voluntarily ended his life 
at a great age. His abstemiousness and the severity of 
his morality were famous amongst the ancients ; his self- 
denial became proverbial. The monument to his memory, 
erected by the Athenians at the instigation of the Mace- 
donian king Antigonus, contained the fine encomium, 
*His life corresponded to his precepts !' Zeno's succes- 
sor in the school was Gleanthes of Assos. in Asia Minor, 
a faithful follower of the tenets of his master. Cleanthes 
was succeeded by Chrysippus, who was born at Soli in 
Cilicia, and died about the year 208 ; he was so pre- 
eminently the support of the Stoa, that it used to be 
said, 'If Chrysippus were hot, the Stoa were not.' At 
all events, as, for all the later Stoics, he was an object 
of exalted veneration, and almost infallible authority, 
he must be regarded as the most eminent originator of 
their doctrine. He was so fertile a writer that, as it is 
said, he composed no fewer than 705 books, his habit, 
indeed, being to discuss the same proposition repeatedly, 



124 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and to support it by a vast number of extracts from other 
works, especially those of the poets, by way of testi- 
monies and examples. But of all his works not any are 
left to us. Chrysippus closes the series of philosophers 
who founded the Stoa. Subsequent chiefs of the school, 
as Pancetius, the friend of the younger Scipio (his cele- 
brated book on duties was wrought by Cicero into his 
own work of the same name), and Posidonius (whom 
Cicero, Pompey, and others attended), proceeded more 
eclectically. 

Among the Stoics, philosophy was in the closest union 
with practical life. Philosophy is for them wisdom in a 
practical interest ; it is the exercise of virtue, the train- 
ing-school of virtue, the science of those principles by 
which a virtuous life shall form itself. All science, art, 
instruction that is only for its own sake, is to them but a 
superfluous accessory ; man has nothing to strive for but 
wisdom, wisdom in divine and human things, and adapt 
his life accordingly. Logic supplies the method for at- 
taining to true knowledge ; physics teach the nature 
and order of the universe ; and ethics draw thence the 
inferences for practical life. 

What is most remarkable in their logic, and most 
characteristic of the dogmatic nature of the Post-Aristo- 
telian philosophy, is the quest of a subjective criterion 
of truth that may assure the determination of true and 
false ideas. All our knowledge, according to the Stoics, 
springs from actual impressions on us of the external 
things, from the objective experiences of sense, which are 
then combined into notions by the understanding. 
Knowledge, then, is not due to the subject, but to the 
object, and therefore is it true. As it is possible, how- 
ever, that ideas of our subjective imagination may mingle 
with the true perceptions produced in us by things, the 
question comes, how are we able to separate the two 
sorts of consciousness — by what distinguish the true as 
true, the false as false ? The criterion here is the irre- 
sistible evidence, the power of conviction, with which 
an idea forces itself on the soul. In regard to any idea 
which possesses evidence of this nature, which involun- 
tarily compels the soul to the recognition of its truth, it 
is to be assumed that it is no mere imagination, but the 
product of a real object. Any other criterion than this 
'striking evidence* is impossible, for we know things 
only through the medium of our impressions. This 



STOICISM. 125 

Stoic theory of cognition, then, occupies a middle place 
between empiricism and idealism. Only experience of 
sense is certain ; but whether there be something actually 
perceived, is only decided by the irresistible impression of 
truth which the experience brings with it for the subject. 
In their physics, in which they essentially follow Hera* 
clitus, the Stoics distinguish themselves from their pre- 
decessors, especially Plato and Aristotle, chiefly by their 
rigorously applied axiom that nothing incorporeal exists, 
that everything substantial — that all things are corporeal 
(as in logic they held that all knowledge is due to percep- 
tion of sense). This sensualism or materialism of the 
Stoics looks strange beside their general idealistico-moral 
tendency. Nevertheless it is quite in keeping with their 
dogmatic stand-point : an ideal entity is not objective, 
not substantial enough for them ; the relations and func- 
tions of things are ideal, but the things themselves must 
possess bodily reality. At the same time it appeared 
impossible to them that anything ideal could act on any- 
thing corporeal, anything spiritual on anything material, 
or conversely. What things mutually act must be of 
like substance ; spirit, divinity, the soul consequently is 
a body, but only of another sort than matter and the 
outward body. The immediate consequence of this 
effort of the Stoics to abolish all dualism between the 
spiritual and the material is their pantheism. If Aris- 
totle, before them, had divided the divine being from 
the world, as the pure eternal form from the eternal 
matter, the Stoics could not in consistency admit this 
separation, excluding as it did all real operation of God 
on the world. To separate God from matter appeared 
to them a false self-substantiation of the world, and so, 
like force and its manifestation, they made God and 
the world one. Matter is the passive foundation of 
things, the primal substrate of divine activity — God is 
the active and formative power of matter, immanent in 
it and essentially combined with it. The world is God's 
body, God the world's soul. Thus, then, the Stoics con- 
ceived God and matter as one substance identical with 
itself, called matter when considered on its passive and 
mutable side, God on the side of its active and ever 
self-identical power. The world has no independent 
existence, it is not self-subsistent finite being ; it is 
produced, animated, ruled by God : it is a prodigious 
living thing (ft)o*'), the rational soul of which is God. 



126 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

All in it is equally divine, for the divine power equally 
pervades all. In it God is the eternal necessity which 
subjects all to unalterable law, the rational providence 
which duly forms and frames all, the perfect wisdom 
which upholds the order of the universe, commands and 
rewards the good, forbids and corrects the bad. Nothing 
in the world can isolate itself, nothing quit its nature and 
its limit ; all is unconditionally bound to the order of 
the whole, of which the principle and the might are God. 
Thus, in the physics of the Stoics, we see mirrored the 
rigorously law-directed spirit of their philosophy; like 
Heraclitus, they are the sworn foes of all individual self- 
will. This principle of the unity of all being, brought 
them into connexion with Heraclitus in another respect ; 
like him they conceived the being of God, already (as 
said) corporeal to them, as the fiery, heat-giving power, 
which, as such, is life in the world, but equally resumes 
all life into itself, in order to give it forth again, and so 
on ad infinitum (compare vti. 4). They called God, 
now the spiritual breath that permeates nature, now 
the art-subserving fire that forms or creates the uni- 
verse, and now the aether, which, however, was not 
different to them from the principle of fire. In conse- 
quence of this identification of God and the world, in agree- 
ment with which the entire evolution of the universe was 
assumed, further, as but a development of the divine 
life, the remaining theory of existence acquired a very 
simple form. All in the world appears to them inspired 
by the divine life, coming into special existence out of 
the divine whole, and returning into it again, and thus 
bringing to pass a necessary cycle of constant origination 
and decease, in which, perpetually recreating itself, only 
the whole is permanent. On the other hand, again, 
within the whole no single unit is in vain, nothing is 
without an end, in every actual existence there is reason. 
Even evil (within certain limits) belongs to the perfection 
of the whole, as it is the condition of virtue (injustice, for 
example, of justice) ; the system of the universe could not 
possibly be better or fitter for its purpose than it is. 

The ethics of the Stoics are very closely connected with 
their physics. In the latter, the rational, divinely insti- 
tuted order of the universe has been demonstrated. 
Here now their ethics come in, referring the entire moral 
rectitude of life, and consequently the highest law of 
human action, to the rationality and order of universal 



STOICISM. 127 

nature, and asserting the supreme good, or the supreme 
end of our endeavours, to be an adaptation of our life 
to the universal law, to the harmony of the world, to 
nature. * Follow nature,' or * live in agreement with 
nature,' this is the moral principle of the Stoics. More 
precisely : live in agreement with thy own rational 
nature, so far as it is not corrupted and distorted 
by art, but remains in its natural simplicity ; be know- 
ingly and willingly that which by nature thou art, a 
rational part of the rational whole, be reason and in 
reason, instead of following unreason and thy own parti- 
cular self-will. Here is thy destination, here thy happi- 
ness, as on this path thou avoidest every contradiction to 
thy own nature and to the order of things without, and 
providest thyself a life that glides along undisturbed in 
a smooth and even stream. 

From this moral principle, which involves at the same 
time the Stoic conception of virtue, all the peculiarities 
of the developed theory, follow with logical necessity. 
(a.) <The relation between virtue and pleasure. Through 
the postulate of a life in accordance with nature, the 
unit is placed in subjection to the whole ; every per- 
sonal end is excluded, and consequently the most perso- 
nal, — pleasure. Pleasure as a remission of that moral 
energy of the soul, which alone is happiness, could seem 
to the Stoics only as an interruption to life, as evil. It 
is not in accordance with nature, it is no end of nature, 
was the opinion of Cleanthes ; and if other Stoics relaxed 
something of this severity, in allowing it to be regarded 
as in accordance with nature or even as a good, they still 
maintained that it possessed no moral worth, and was no 
end of nature, that it was something only accidentally 
connected with the due and proper operation of nature, 
that it was no active but only a passive condition of the 
soul. The whole austerity of the Stoic moral theory lies 
here : every personal consideration is rejected, every 
external end is to be looked on as alien to mora- 
lity ; wise action, that is the only end. There directly 
coheres with this (6.) the opinion of the Stoics in regard 
to material goods. Virtue, the sole end of man as a 
rational being, is also his sole happiness, his sole good : 
only the inner reason and strength of the soul, only 
will and action in conformity with nature, can render 
man happy, and supply him with a counterpoise to the 
contingencies and obstructions of external life. It follows, 



128 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

in simple consequence from this, that external goods, 
health, wealth, etc., are, one and all of them, indifferent; 
they contribute nothing to reason, nothing to the great- 
ness and strength of the soul ; they may be used as well 
rationally as irrationally ; they may issue in grief and 
they may issue in joy ; they are not, therefore, anything 
really good ; only virtue is profitable ; to want or to lose 
external possessions affects not the happiness of the vir- 
tuous ; even the so-called external evils are no evils, the 
only evil is vice, the unreason which is contrary to 
nature. The Stoics, differing in this respect from their 
predecessors the Cynics, grant that there are differences 
in these external things ; that some of them, though 
certainly not morally good, have ' a certain value/ are 
* preferable * to others ; and that this preferableness, 
so far as it contributes to a life in accordance with 
nature, may be reckoned into the general moral account. 
Thus the wise man, when offered his choice, prefers 
health and riches to sickness and poverty; and in so 
preferring he follows a rational reason, for health and 
riches are more favourable to action, and consequently to 
virtuous action, than their contraries. But he regards 
them not as positive goods, for they are not that highest 
good to which all is to be sacrificed. They are inferior 
to the possession of virtue itself, in respect of which, in- 
deed, they come not at all into account. It is seen from 
this distinction between the good and the preferable, how 
the Stoics were always bent on taking the good only in 
its highest sense, and on excluding from it everything re- 
lative, (c.) This abstract apprehension of the notion of 
virtue announces itself further in their abrupt antithesis 
of virtue and vice. Virtue is reasonableness, due action 
according to the nature of things ; vice is contrariety to 
reason, that perversity which is in contradiction to nature 
and truth. The action of man is either, as they further 
argue, rational and free from contradiction, or it is not 
so. In the first case he is virtuous ; in the second, how- 
ever inconsiderable may be his contradiction to reason 
and nature, he is vicious. He only is good, who is per- 
fectly good ; vicious is every one who is irrational or 
wrong in any one point, who is subject, for example, to 
any appetite, affection, passion, fault, or who commits a 
fault. There is no transition from contradiction to free- 
dom from contradiction, there is no middle term between 
them, any more than between truth and falsehood. It 



STOICISM. 129 

was but the same doctrine when the Stoics affirmed that 
really faultless moral action is only possible through the 
possession of entire virtue, a perfect perception of the 
good, and a perfect power of its realization. Virtue is 
capable of being possessed only wholly, or else not at all, 
and consequently we are only then moral when we pos- 
sess it wholly. Akin to this is the further Stoic para- 
dox, that all good actions are equally right, and all bad 
ones equally wrong, that there are no degrees of good 
and bad, of virtue and vice, but that there is between 
both an absolute and essential contrast. The Stoics 
allowed here only, that legal acts, — such acts as substan- 
tially coincide with the law of virtue, without having 
directly risen from this law as source, — lie in the middle 
between virtue and vice, but are morally worthless, (d.) 
The special theory of ethical action was completely elabo- 
rated by the later Stoics, who were thus the founders of 
all deontological schemes. Virtue consists, according to 
them, in absolute judgment, absolute control of the soul 
over pain, absolute mastery of desire and lust, absolute 
justice that treats all only according to its worth in the 
system of things. Duties are respectively duties to self 
and duties to others. The former concern the preserva- 
tion of self, with pursuit of all that agrees and avoidance 
of all that disagrees with nature and reason. The latter 
concern the relations of individuals socially, who have to 
guide themselves according to the principles of their 
social nature, and fulfil in one another's regard all the 
resultant duties of justice and humanity. The state is 
likewise an emanation from the social nature of man. 
The separation of men into a variety of hostile states, is 
a contradiction to the notion of the state ; but the entire 
race ought to form a single community with the same 
principles and laws. Thus Stoicism originated the idea 
of cosmopolitism, (e.) The picture of the wise man forms 
the conclusion of the teaching of the Stoics. This, as 
pattern and model for action, is to be a representation of 
the ideal of virtue in its most rigorous form, and of the 
absolute felicity that is given with it. The wise man is 
he who actually possesses a true knowledge of divine 
and human things, as well as the absolute moral percep- 
tion and strength that flow from it, and who by conse- 
quence unites in himself every conceivable perfection of 
humanity. Any more special realization of this ideal 
seems paradoxical, as such absolute perfection is quite 
I 




130 HISTORY OF PHILOSOP. 

incapable of union with, ine idea of the individual. 
Precisely here, however, the Stoics laid most stress, inas- 
much as the elevation of the subject to virtue, a virtue 
that is pure and entire, is the postulate that pervades 
their whole ethical system, and specifically distinguishes 
it from the Aristotelian requisition of merely individual 
and relative virtues. The wise man, they said, knows 
all that there is to know, and understands it better than 
any one else, because he possesses a true constitution of 
soul, and a true knowledge of the nature of things. He 
alone is the true statesman, lawgiver, orator, educator, 
critic, poet, physician ; whilst the unwise man remains 
always raw and unformed, let him possess what ac- 
quirements he may. The wise man is without fault or 
failing, as he always uses reason, and thinks all in its 
rational connexion. On the same account, nothing sur- 
prises, nothing terrifies him ; he falls not into weakness 
or passion. He alone is the true fellow- citizen, fellow- 
man, kinsman, and friend, because he alone perfectly 
knows and fulfils the duties which these relations in- 
volve. In the same way, the wise man, as he possesses 
the good as his own law within himself, is free from all 
restriction of external law and established observance : 
he is king, lord of his action, for from the same cause he 
is responsible only to himself. No less free is he, by his 
character and his virtue, in reference to business and 
vocation ; he can move with ease in every sphere of life ; 
he is rich, for he can procure himself all that he wants, 
and dispense with all that he is without ; he is happy 
under all circumstances, for he has happiness in himself, 
in his virtue. The unwise, again, do not in truth possess 
all the internal and external goods which they seem and 
suppose themselves to possess, because they possess not 
the indispensable condition of true happiness, perfection 
of soul. In this thought, that inner moral integrity is 
the necessary basis of all qualification for action and of 
all true happiness, lies the truth of this Stoical doctrine. 
It equally displays the abstraction, however, in which 
the whole system is involved ; this wisdom is an unreal 
ideal, as indeed the Stoics themselves admitted ; it is a 
general notion of perfection which, inapplicable to life, 
proves that its supporters had only one-sidedly adopted 
for principle the universality of subjectivity. The sub- 
ject, that is, if formerly only an accident of the state, 
is now to be absolute. But just so his reality disappears 



EPICUREANISM. 131 

into the mist and vapour of an abstract ideal. The merit 
of the Stoic philosophy, nevertheless, is that, in an age of 
ruin, they held fast by the moral idea, and, through ex- 
clusion of the political element from morality, estab- 
lished the latter as an independent special science. 



XVIII. — Epicu reanism. 

NEARLY contemporaneously with the Stoa, or a 
little earlier, there arose the Epicurean school. 
Its founder, Epicurus, the son of an Athenian who had 
emigrated to Samos, was born 342 B.C., six years after 
the death of Plato. Of his youth and culture little that 
is trustworthy is known. In his thirty-sixth year, he 
opened at Athens a philosophical school, over which he 
presided till his death (in the year 270 B.C.) His dis- 
ciples and adherents formed a private society, which was 
held together by a close tie of friendship (after Alex- 
ander, social life comes now in place of the falling poli- 
tical life). Epicurus himself compared his society to that 
of the Pythagoreans, though it placed not, like theirs, 
its means in a common fund, since, as Epicurus was 
accustomed to say, one true friend must trust another 
true friend. Epicurus's moral character has been fre- 
quently assailed; but his life, according to the most 
credible testimony, was in every respect blameless, and 
he himself alike amiable and estimable. Much of what 
is reported about the offensive sensuality of the Epicu- 
rean sty is in general to be considered calumny. Epi- 
curus wrote a great many works, more even than Aris- 
totle, less only than Chrysippus. He himself prepared 
the way for the disappearance of his greater works, by 
reducing the sum of his philosophy to short extracts, 
which he recommended his disciples to get by rote. 
These extracts have been for the most part preserved 
to us. 

The tendency of Epicurus is very distinctly character- 
ized in his definition of philosophy. He denominated it 
an activity which realizes a happy life through ideas and 
arguments. It has essentially for him, therefore, a prac- 
tical object, and it results, as he desires, in ethics 
which are to teach us how to attain to a life of felicity. 
The Epicureans did, indeed, accept the usual division of 
philosophy into logic (called canonic by them), physics, 



132 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

and ethics. But logic, limited to the investigation of 
the criteria of truth, was considered by them only as 
ancillary to physics. Physics, again, existed only for 
ethics, in order to secure men from those vain terrors of 
empty fables, and that superstitious fear •which might 
obstruct their happiness. In Epicureanism, we have 
still, then, the three ancient parts of philosophy, but in 
reverse order, logic and physics being only in the service 
of ethics. To this last we shall limit the present exposi- 
tion, the others being but of small scientific interest, 
and the physics especially, while very incomplete and 
incoherent in themselves, being nothing but a return to 
the atoms of Bemocritus. 

With Aristotle and the other philosophers of his time, 
Epicurus, as said, sought the summum bonum in felicity of 
life. But happiness in his view consists in nothing but 
pleasure. Virtue, he declares, can have no value in itself, 
but only so far as it offers us something — an agreeable 
life. The question now, then, is the more exact defini- 
tion of pleasure, and here Epicurus differs in essential 
points from his predecessors the Cyrenaics (compare 
xni. 3). (a.) While Aristippus viewed the pleasure of 
the moment as the object of human effort, Epicurus 
holds this object to be the permanent tranquil satisfac- 
tion that is the enduring condition of an entire life. 
True pleasure, therefore, is a subject of calculation and 
reflection. Many a pleasure must be rejected, as pre- 
paring us only pain ; many a pain must be accepted as 
preparing us only a greater pleasure. (5.) As the wise 
man seeks his supreme good not for the moment, but for 
the whole of life, spiritual joy and sorrow, which, as 
memory and hope, embrace the past and the future, 
evidently claim more of his consideration than the 
fleshly pleasure and pain which are only temporary. 
But the joy of spirit consists in the imperturbable tran- 
quillity of the wise man, in the feeling of his inner worth, 
of his superiority to the blows of fate. Thus Epicurus 
could truly say that it is better to be sad with reason 
than without reason glad ; and that the wise man may 
exist in happiness even amid tortures. Nay, it was 
allowable for him (in this a true follower of Aristotle) 
to place pleasure and happiness in the closest union with 
virtue, and maintain the one to be inseparable from the 
other, happiness impossible without virtue, and virtue 
impossible without happiness. For the same reason, 



EPICUREANISM. 133 

friendship was to him, though held by the Cyrenaic3 
to be superfluous, a chief means of happiness ; and this 
it is as an enduring, life-gladdening, life-embellishing 
union of coDgenial natures, and as conferring so a lasting 
satisfaction which the joys of sense can not procure, 
(c.) When other hedonists declared the positive feeling 
of pleasure, raised, too, to the highest pitch of intensity, to 
be the highest good, Epicurus, keeping before him the 
possibility of a well-being that should extend over the 
whole of life, could not agree with them. He demands 
not for a happy life the most exquisite pleasures ; he 
recommends, on the contrary, sobriety and temperance, 
contentment with little, and a life generally in accord 
with nature. He protests against the false interpretation 
of his doctrine, that represents him to recommend as the 
greatest good the sensual enjoyments of the voluptuary 
and the debauchee ; he boasts to be willing to vie with 
Jupiter himself in happiness, if allowed only plain bread 
and water ; and he even abhors those gratifications 
which necessitate expense, not perhaps for their own 
sakes, but for the evils with which they are attended. 
Not, indeed, that the Epicurean sage will live like a 
Cynic : he will enjoy wherever he can harmlessly enjoy ; 
he will also endeavour to procure himself the means of 
living with decency and comfort. Still the wise man 
can dispense with these finer enjoyments, even though 
not obliged to do so, for he possesses within himself the 
greatest of his satisfactions, he enjoys within himself the 
truest and the most stable joy, — tranquillity of soul, 
impassibility of mind. In opposition to the positive 
pleasure of some hedonists, the theory of Epicurus ends 
rather in the recommendation of negative pleasure, so far 
as he regards freedom from pain as already pleasure, and 
advises the efforts of the sage to be preferably directed to 
the avoidance of the disagreeable. Man, says Epicurus, 
is always plotting in his heart not to suffer or to fear 
pain ; if he has accomplished this, nature is satisfied ; 
positive delights cannot augment happiness, but only 
complicate it. Happiness to him, accordingly, is some- 
thing simple, and easy to be attained, if man will but 
follow nature, and not destroy or imbitter for himself 
his own life by inordinate demands, or else by the foolish 
, fear of evils in supposition. To the evils which we are 
not to dread, belongs, before all, death. It is no evil not 
to live. And so the wise man fears not death, before 



134 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

which most men tremble : for if we are, it is not, 
if it is, we are not ; when it is present we feel it not, 
for it is the end of all feeling, and what cannot harm us 
when present, that need not trouble us in the future. 
The teaching of Epicurus tends ever indeed to enjoin the 
pure subjective endeavour to secure for the individual 
peace and contentment in life ; he knows nothing of a 
moral destiny in man ; but he has ennobled the antique 
conception of pleasure to the full of its capacity. 

Epicurus crowns his general view by his doctrine of the 
gods, to whom he applies his ideal of happiness. The 
gods lead, he thinks, in human form, but without human 
wants, and without permanent bodies, in the empty 
interspaces of the infinite worlds, an untroubled, unalter- 
able life, whose bliss is insusceptible of increase. From 
this bliss of the gods he infers that they can have nothing 
to do with the superintendence of our affairs : for bliss is 
peace ; they trouble neither themselves nor others ; and 
therefore they are not to be regarded as objects of super- 
stitious and disquieting terrors. These inert gods of Epi- 
curus, these imperturbable and yet unstable forms, these 
bodies which are not bodies, do, indeed, fit in but poorly 
with the rest of the system ; still it is the happiness of 
man that is consulted here also, the gods are disarmed 
of their terrors, and yet preserved in such modified shape 
as serves rather to confirm than refute the Epicurean 
creed. 

\ 
XIX.- — Scepticism and the Later Academy. 

THE conclusion of all these subjective tendencies is scep- 
ticism, manifesting itself in the complete destruction 
of the bridge between subject and object, in the denial of 
all objective knowledge, science, truth, in the complete 
retirement of the sage into himself and his subjective ex- 
perience. But there is a distinction between the elder 
scepticism, the later Academy, and subsequent scepticism. 
1. The elder Scepticism. — The head of the older sceptics 
is Pyrrho of Elis, a contemporary of Aristotle. Our chief 
informant in regard to Pyrrho's opinions, is, — he himself 
having left nothing in writing, — his disciple and adherent 
Tim on of Phlius, the satirist or sillographist (author, 
that is, of a satirical poem on the whole of Greek philo- 
sophy up to that time). The tendency of these sceptical 



SCEPTICISM AND THE LATER ACADEMY. 135 

philosophers was, like that of the Stoics and Epicureans, 
proximately a practical one : philosophy shall conduct us 
to happiness. But to live happy, we must know how 
things are, and how, consequently, we must relate our- 
selves to them. They answered the first question in this 
way : What things really are, lies beyond the sphere of 
our knowledge, since we perceive not things as they are, 
but only as they appear to us to be ; our ideas of them 
are neither true nor false, anything definite of anything 
cannot be said. Neither our perceptions nor our ideas of 
things teach us anything true ; the opposite of every pro- 
position, of every enunciation, is still possible ; and hence, 
in regard to one and the same thing, the contradictory 
views of men in general, and of professed philosophers in 
particular. In this impossibility of any objective know- 
ledge, of science, the true relation of the philosopher to 
things is entire suspense of judgment, complete reserve 
of all positive opinion. In order to avoid all definite ex- 
pressions, the sceptics on all occasions availed themselves, 
therefore, of doubtful phrases : it is possible, it may be, 
perhaps, as it seems to me, I know nothing for certain 
(to which they carefully added, nor do I know even this 
for certain that I know nothing for certain). In this sus- 
pense of judgment, they believed their practical end, happi- 
ness, attained : for, like a shadow, imperturbability of soul 
follows freedom from judgment, as if it were a gift of for- 
tune. He who has adopted the sceptical mood of thought, 
lives ever in peace, without care and without desire, in 
a pure apathy that knows neither of good nor evil. Be- 
tween health and disease, between life and death, difference 
there is none — in this sheer antithesis, Pyrrho is under- 
stood to have enunciated the axiom of sceptical apathy. 

It lies in the nature of the case that the sceptics ob- 
tained the matter of their conclusions chiefly by means 
of a polemical discussion of the views and investiga- 
tions of the dogmatists. But their supporting grounds 
were shallow, and appear to be partly dialectical blunders 
readily refuted, and partly empty subtleties. To the older 
sceptics is ascribed the employment of the following ten 
sceptical tropes (points or arguments), which, however, were 
probably collected and perfected, neither by Pyrrho nor 
Timon, but by iEnesidemus, who, as it appears, flourished 
shortly after Cicero. The sceptical reservation of opinion 
made appeal (1.) to the varieties of the feelings and sensa- 
tions of living beings in general ; (2.) to the bodily and 



136 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

mental diversities of men, by reason of which things ap- 
pear different to different persons; (3.) to the varying 
accounts of the senses themselves in regard to things, 
and to the uncertainty as to whether the organs of sense 
are competent or not ; (4.) to the dependence of our 
perceptions of things on our different bodily and mental 
states ; as well as (5.) on the various positions of things 
to us and to each other (distance, etc.) ; (6.) to the fact 
that we know nothing directly, but all only through some 
extraneous medium (air, etc.); (7.) to the varying im- 
pressions of the same thing by varying quantity, tempera- 
ture, colour, motion, etc. ; (8.) to the dependence of our 
impressions on custom, the new and strange affecting us 
differently from the common ; (9.) to the relativity of 
all notions, predicates in general expressing only relations 
of things to each other or to our perceptions of them ; 
(10.) to the diversity of the customs, manners, laws, 
religious conceptions, and dogmatical opinions of men. 

2. The later Academy. — In consequence of its contest 
with the Stoics, in especial, Scepticism, when introduced 
into the Platonic school (first by Arcesilaus, 316-241), 
obtained greater importance than in the contributions 
of the Pyrrhonists. Here it sought its supports prin- 
cipally in the authority of the writings of Plato, and 
in the traditions of his oral teaching. Arcesilaus would 
never have been able to assume and maintain his chair 
in the Academy, had he not entertained himself and 
communicated to his disciples the conviction that his 
tenet of a suspense of judgment was essentially in 
agreement with those of Socrates and Plato, and that by 
banishment of dogmatism, he was only restoring the 
pristine and true dialectic signification of Platonism. 
His action was further influenced by the opposition 
entertained by him to the harsh dogmatism which, 
pretending to be in every respect an improvement on the 
Platonic teaching, was but just set up in the Stoa. 
Hence the remark of Cicero, that Arcesilaus directed all 
his sceptical and polemical attacks against Zeno, the 
founder of the Stoa. He particularly disputed the Stoic 
theory of cognition, alleging against it that even false 
perceptions may induce perfect conviction, that all per- 
ception, indeed, leads only to opinion, and not to know- 
ledge as such. Accordingly, he denied the existence of 
any criterion by which truth might be accurately dis- 
criminated. Whatever truth our opinions might contain, 



THE ROMANS. 137 

we could never, he thought, be certain of it. It was in 
this sense that he said, * We can know nothing, not even 
this itself, that we know nothing.' In the moral sphere, 
however, in the love of the good and the hatred of the 
bad, he demanded that we should follow the course of 
probability, that course namely that showed for itself the 
most and the best reasons : so we should act rightly and 
be happy, for that was the course of action which accorded 
with reason and the nature of things. Of the subsequent 
leaders of the New Academy we can mention here only 
Carneades (214-129), whose whole philosophy, however, 
almost exclusively consisted in his polemic against the 
logic, theology, and physics of the Stoics. His positive 
contribution was an attempt to introduce a doctrine of 
method for probable thought, or a theory of philosophical 
probability which should determine the various grades of 
it ; for to Carneades also probability was a necessity in 
practical life. Later still, the Academy tended more, in 
a retrograde direction, to an eclectico-dogmatic doctrine. 
3. Later Scepticism. — Scepticism proper was once 
more revived at the time of the total decline of Greek 
philosophy. Of this period the most important sceptics, 
or at least promoters of scepticism, are JEnesidemus, 
Agrippa (later than iEnesidemus, and who principally 
insisted on the necessity of leaving nothing without proof, 
at the same time that the proof itself demanded again 
proof, and so on usque ad infinitum), and Sextus Empiri- 
cus (a Greek physician, that is, of the Empirical sect), 
who lived probably in the first half of the third century 
after Christ. The last is the most considerable, as we 
possess from him two writings of genuine historical value 
(the Pyrrhonie Hypotyposes in three books, and his work 
Adversus Mathematicos in nine), in which he has expounded 
at full all that ancient scepticism could contrive to bring 
forward against certainty in knowledge. 



XX. — The Romans. 

THE Romans have no share of their own in the deve- 
lopment of philosophy. After an interest in Greek 
philosophy and literature began among them, — after the 
embassy to Rome, on the part of Athens, of the three 
distinguished representatives of Attic culture and elo- 
quence, Carneades the Academic, Critolaus the Peripa- 



138 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tetic, and Diogenes the Stoic, — and after the closer 
connexion of the two States in consequence of the con- 
version (a few years later than the embassy) of Greece 
into a province of Rome, almost all the more important 
Greek systems of philosophy, especially the Epicurean 
(Lucretius) and the Stoic (Seneca), flourished and found 
adherents among the Romans, but without receiving from 
them any actual philosophical improvement. The uni- 
versal character of the Roman philosophizing is eclec- 
ticism, which very strikingly exhibits itself in the case 
of the most important and influential of philosophical 
writers among the Romans, Cicero. Nevertheless, the 
popular philosophy of this and other thinkers of a similar 
bent is not, despite its want of originality, independency, 
and rigour, to be too lightly estimated ; for it led to the 
introduction of philosophy as a constituent element in 
culture generally. 



XXI. — Neo-Platonism. 

IN Neo-Platonism the spirit of antiquity made its last 
desperate attempt at a philosophical monism which 
should put an end to the dualism between subjectivity 
and objectivity. It makes this attempt on the one hand 
from the position of subjectivity, and stands in this re- 
spect on the same plane with the other Post- Aristotelian 
subjective philosophies (compare xvi. 7). On the other 
hand, again, it aims at the establishment of objective 
principles in regard to the highest notions of metaphysics, 
in regard to the absolute — it aims, indeed, at the estab- 
lishment of a system of absolute philosophy, and in this 
respect is a counterpart of the Platonico-Aristotelian 
philosophy, with which it connects itself externally also 
in professing to be a revival of the pristine Platonism. 
On both aspects, then, it constitutes the close of ancient 
philosophy ; it represents the final gathering-in, but not 
less the exhaustion of antique thought and the dissolu- 
tion of ancient philosophy. 

The first, and, at the same time, the most important 
representative of Neo-Platonism, is Ploiinus of Lycopolis 
in Egypt. He was a disciple of Ammonius Saccas, who 
taught Platonic philosophy at Alexandria in the begin- 
ning of the third century, but left behind him nothing in 
writing. Plotinus (205-270 A.D.) taught philosophy at 



NEO-PLA TONISM. 1 39 

Rome from the age of forty. He explained his views in 
a series of hastily written, ill-connected tractates, which, 
after his death, and in obedience to his directions, Por- 
phyry, the most celebrated of his disciples (born 233, 
taught also at Rome philosophy and eloquence), arranged 
and edited in six Enneads (parts consisting of nine books 
each). From Rome and Alexandria, the Neo-Platonism 
of Plotinus passed, in the fourth century, to Athens, where 
it established itself in the Academy. Among the Neo- 
Platonists of the fourth century, Porphyry's disciple 
lamblichus, among those of the fifth Proclus (412-485), 
possessed pre-eminently the respect of the school. With 
the disappearance of Paganism before the triumphant 
advance of Christianity, this last blossom of Greek philo- 
sophy, in the course of the sixth century, faded too. 
The common characteristic of the whole of the Neo- 
Platonic philosophers is the tendency to enthusiasm, to 
theosophy, and theurgy. The most of them addicted 
themselves to sorcery, and the more eminent professed to 
enjoy divine communications, to foresee the future, and 
to perform miracles. They bore themselves then as 
hierophants quite as much as philosophers ; with the 
unmistakable endeavour to found — as Pagan antitype of 
Christianity — a philosophy which should be at the same 
time a universal religion. In the following exposition of 
Neo-Platonism we confine ourselves more particularly to 
Plotinus. 

(a.) The Subjective Condition of Ecstasy. — The re- 
sult of the philosophical attempts that had preceded !Neo- 
Platonism was scepticism, recognition of the inadequacy 
of the Stoic and the Epicurean wisdom in the practice of 
life, an absolutely negative relation to all positive theo- 
retical acquisitions. But scepticism was in this way 
brought only to the contrary of what it aimed at. It had 
aimed at complete apathy on the part of the sage, but 
what it was brought to was the necessity of a perpetual 
opposition in refutation of all positive allegations, not the 
repose which was to follow scepticism* but an unappeas- 
able unrest. This absolute dispeace of consciousness that 
strives to absolute peace could lead only to the longing 
to be freed from this dispeace itself, the longing for a 
conclusion that, secure from every sceptical objection, 
should absolutely satisfy. This longing for absolute 
truth found its historical expression in Neo-Platonism. 
The individual seeks to become master of the absolute, 



140 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

to embrace it, to hold it immediately within himself, that 
is, to attain to it, not through objective knowledge, not 
through any dialectical process, but directly through his 
own inner mystical subjective exaltation, in the form of 
immediate vision, of ecstasy. Knowledge of the true, 
Plotinus maintains, is not won by proof, not by any in- 
termediating process, not so that objects remain outside 
of him who knows, but so that all difference between the 
knowing and the known disappears ; it is a vision of 
reason into its own self ; it is not we who have vision of 
reason, but reason that has vision of its own self ; in no 
other manner can fruition of it be reached. Nay, even 
this vision of reason, within which subject and object are 
still opposed to each other as different from each other, 
must itself be transcended. The supreme degree of cog- 
nition is vision of the supreme, the single principle of 
things ; in which all separation between it and the soul 
ceases ; in which this latter, in divine rapture, touches 
the absolute itself, feels itself filled by it, illuminated 
by it. He who has attained to this veritable union with 
God, despises henceforth even that pure thought which 
he formerly loved, because it was still after all only a 
movement, and presupposed a difference between the seer 
and the seen. This mystical absorption into divinity 
or the One, this trance or swooning into the absolute, 
is what gives so peculiar a character to Neo-Platonism 
as opposed to the Greek philosophical systems proper. 

(b.) The Cosmical Principles. — In close connexion 
with this rapture-theory of the Neo-Platonics stands 
their doctrine of three cosmical principles. To the two 
already assumed cosmical principles of a (world-) soul 
and a (world-) reason, they added a third and higher 
principle, as ultimate unity of all differences and contra- 
rieties, in which, consequently (simply to be this), differ- 
ence must be resolved into the pure simplicity of essential 
being. Reason is not this simple principle, for in it the an- 
tithesis of thinking, — of thinker and thought, and of the 
movement from the first to the last, — still exists ; reason 
has the nature of the many in it ; but the one as prin- 
ciple must precede the many (unity precede variety) ; if 
then there is to be a unity of the totality of being, 
reason must be transcended for the absolute one. This 
primal being is now variously named by Plotinus ; he 
calls it the first, the one, the good (see xrv. 4. /), what 
stands above the beent (the beent disappears for him into 



NEO-PLA T0XIS3L 141 

an accessory notion of reason, and forms, united with 
reason, in the co-ordination of the highest notions, only 
the second step or grade), names truly through which 
Plotinus hopes not adequately to express the nature of 
that primitive one, but only figuratively shadow it out. 
Thought and will he allows it not, because it is in want 
of nothing, can require nothing ; it is not energy but 
above energy ; life is not a predicate of it ; nothing beent, 
no thing and no being, none of the most universal cate- 
gories of being can be attributed to it ; all other negative 
determinations are incompetent in its regard : in short, 
it is something unspeakable, unthinkable. Plotinus is 
wholly bent on thinking his first principle as absolute 
unity, excludent of all and every determinateness that 
would only render it finite, and therefore, as in itself, 
independent of all connexion with everything else. He 
is unable to maintain this pure abstraction, however, 
when he sets himself afterwards to show how from the 
first principle there become or emanate all the others, 
and primarily the two other cosmical ones. In order to 
obtain a beginning for his theory of emanation, he finds 
himself compelled to assume and to think his first prin- 
ciple, in its relation to the second, as a creative or gene- 
rative one. 

(c.) The Neo -Platonic Theory of Emanation. — 
Every such theory, and the Neo -Platonic as well, assumes 
the world to be an effluence or eradiation of God, in such 
manner that the remoter emanation possesses ever a lower 
degree of perfection than that which precedes it ; and 
represents consequently the totality of existence as a 
descending series. Eire, says Plotinus, emits heat, snow 
cold, fragrant bodies exhale odours, and every organized 
being, so soon as it has reached maturity, generates what 
is like it. In the same manner, the all-perfect and eter- 
nal, in the exuberance of its perfection, permits to ema- 
nate from itself what is equally everlasting and next itself 
the best, — reason, which is the immediate reflexion, the 
ectype of the primeval one. Plotinus is rich in images 
to make it conceivable that, in this emission or produc- 
tion of reason, the one loses nothing and nowise weakens 
itself. After the one, reason possesses the greatest per- 
fection. It contains within itself the world of ideas, the 
all of immutable, veritable being. Of its sublimity and 
glory we may gain some conception, if we attentively 
consider the world of sense, its vastness and magnificence, 



142 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the harmony of its everlasting motion, and then elevate 
our thoughts to its archetype, to the being of the intel- 
ligible world, contemplating intelligible things in their 
pure imperishable essence, and acknowledging intelligence 
as their creator and preserver. In it there is no past, no 
future, but only an eternal present, and no more any 
dividedness of space than any changeableness of time ; 
it is the true eternity which time but copies. As reason 
from the one, so from reason again, and equally without 
change on its part, there emanates the eternal soul of the 
world. This soul is the ectype of reason : filled with 
reason, it realizes the latter in a world without : it re- 
presents the ideas in external sensible matter, which 
(matter), unqualified, indefinite, non-beent, is, in the scale, 
the last and lowest of emanations. In this manner the 
universal soul is the fashioner of the visible world, form- 
ing it as material copy of its own self, penetrating and 
animating it, and moving it in circle. The series of 
emanations closes here, then, and we have reached, as was 
the intention of the theory, in an uninterrupted descent 
from highest to lowest, what is but a copy of true being, 
the world of sense. 

The individual souls, like the soul of the world, are 
amphibia between the higher element of reason and the 
lower of sense, now involved in the latter, and the desti- 
nies of the latter, and now turning to their source, reason. 
From the world of reason, which is their true and proper 
home, they have descended, each at its appointed time, 
reluctantly obedient to an inner necessity, into the cor- 
poreal world, without, however, wholly breaking with 
the world of ideas : rather they are at once in both, even 
as a ray of light touches at once the sun and the earth. 
Our vocation, therefore — and here we reach again the 
point from which, in the exposition of the Neo-Platonic 
philosophy, we started — can only be a turning of our 
senses and our endeavours to our home in the world of 
the ideas, emancipation of our better self from the bond- 
age of matter, through mortification of sense, through 
ascesis. Once in the ideal world, however, that reflexion 
of the primal beautiful and good, our soul reaches thence 
the ultimate end of every wish and longing, ecstatic 
vision of the one, union with God, unconscious absorp- 
tion — disappearance — in God. 

The Neo Platonic philosophy, it will now be seen, ia 
monism, and the completion, consequently, of ancient 



CHRISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM. 143 

philosophy, so far as it would reduce the totality of being 
to a single ultimate ground. As able, however, to find 
its highest principle, from which all the rest are derived, 
not through self- consciousness and natural rational ex- 
planation, but only through ecstasy, mystic annihilation 
of self, ascesis, theurgy, it is a desperate overleaping of 
all— and, consequently, the self-destruction of ancient — 
philosophy. 



XXII. — Christianity and Scholasticism. 

THE Christian Idea. — The character of Greek intellec- 
tual life at the time of its fairest bloom was the direct 
dependence of the subject on the object (nature, the state, 
etc.) The breach between them, between spirit and 
nature, had not yet begun ; the subject had not yet re- 
flected himself into himself, not yet comprehended him- 
self in his absolute significance, in his infinitude. After 
Alexander the Great, with the decline of Greece, this 
breach appeared. Surrendering the objective world, self- 
consciousness drew back into itself, but only with the 
downfall of the bridge between them. Truth, all element 
of divinity, must now appear to consciousness, not yet 
duly deepened, as alien and remote ; and a feeling of un- 
happiness, of unappeasable longing, take the place of 
that fair unity between spirit and nature which had 
been characteristic of the better periods of Grecian poli- 
tical and intellectual life. A last desperate attempt to 
reach the alienated divine life, to bring the two sides 
violently together, by means of transcendent speculation 
and ascetic mortification, by means of ecstasy and swoon, 
was made by Neo-Platonism ; it failed, and ancient philo- 
sophy sank in complete exhaustion, ruined in the attempt 
to conquer dualism. Christianity took up the problem : 
nay it proclaimed for principle the very idea which ancient 
thought had been unable to realize, annulment of the 
alienation (farness) of God, the substantial unity of God 
and man. That God became man — is, speculatively, the 
fundamental idea of Christianity, an idea which is ex- 
pressed practically, too (and Christianity from the first 
had a practically religious character), in the redemption 
(reconciliation) and the call for regeneration (that is, of a 
purification and religious transformation of sense in con- 
trast to the merely negative action of ascesis). From this 



144 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

it is that monism has remained the character and the fun- 
damental tendency of the whole of modern philosophy. 
And in truth modern philosophy began at that precise 
point at which ancient philosophy ended : the withdrawal 
of thought, of self-consciousness into its own self, this, 
which was the stand-point of the post-Aristotelian philo- 
sophy, constitutes in Descartes the starting-point of 
modern philosophy, which advances thence to the logical 
resolution of that antithesis beyond which ancient philo- 
sophy had been unable to pass. 

2. Scholasticism. — Christianity, in the Apologists of the 
second century and the Alexandrine Fathers, related itself 
very early to the philosophy of the time, especially Pla- 
tonism. Then, later, in the ninth century, attempts were 
made, through Scotus Erigena, at a combination with Neo- 
Platonism. But it was only in the second half of the 
middle ages, or from the eleventh century downwards, 
that there developed itself — in the proper sense — a Chris- 
tian philosophy, the so-called Scholasticism. 

The character of Scholasticism is conciliation between 
dogma and thought, between faith and reason. When the 
dogma passes from the Church, where it took birth, into the 
school, and when theology becomes a science treated in 
universities, the interest of thought comes into play, and 
asserts its right of reducing into intelligibleness the dogma 
which has hitherto stood above consciousness as an exter- 
nal, unquestionable power. A series of attempts is now 
made to procure for the doctrines of the Church the form 
of a scientific system. Of such systems the first is that 
of Petrus Lombardus (d. 1164) in his four books of Sen- 
tences, a work which, on the part of later scholastics, gave 
rise to very numerous commentaries. All these systems 
assumed as infallible presupposition that the creed of the 
Church was absolutely true (no Scholastic system ever 
transgressed this presupposition) ; but they were all guided 
at the same time by a desire to comprehend this revealed, 
positive truth, to rationalize the dogma. " Credo ut in* 
telligam" this dictum of Anselm, the beginner and foun- 
der of Scholasticism (born about 1035, Archbishop of 
Canterbury from 1093), was the watchword of the whole 
movement. In the resolution of its problem, Scholasti- 
cism applied, indeed, the most brilliant, though mostly 
only formal, syllogistic acuteness, and gave rise to mighty 
doctrinal structures, not unlike in complicated bulk to the 
huge domes of Gothic architecture. The universal study 



CHRISTIAXITY AND SCHOLASTICISM. 145 

of Aristotle, named par excellence 'the philosopher,* 
who had several of the most important Scholastics for 
commentators, and who was highly popular at the same 
time among the Arabians (Avicenna and Averroes), sup- 
plied a terminology and schematic points of view for 
method. The zenith of Scholasticism is constituted by 
these indisputably greatest masters of the art and method, 
Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274, a Dominican), and Duns Scotus 
(d. 1308, a Franciscan), — the founders of two schools, 
into which the entire movement was thenceforward 
divided ; the one proclaiming the understanding (intellec- 
tus) as principle, the other will (voluntas) ; both through 
this antithesis of the theoretical and the practical prin- 
ciples, leading to two tendencies essentially different. 
Just here, however, the decline of Scholasticism began : its 
zenith was the turning-point to dissolution. The ration- 
ality of the dogma, the unity of reason and faith, this was 
the presupposition tacitly adopted ; but this presupposition 
fell to the ground, and the whole foundation of Scholastic 
metaphysics was in principle abandoned, the moment Duns 
Scotus transferred the problem of theology to the practi- 
cal sphere. With the separation of theory and practice, 
and still more with the separation in nominalism (see 3) 
of thought and thing, philosophy became divided from 
theology, reason from faith : reason took position above 
faith, above authority (Modern Philosophy), and the re- 
ligious consciousness broke with the traditional dogma 
(the Reformation). 

3. Nominalism aj$t> Realism. — Hand in hand with the 
development of Scholasticism in general, proceeded that 
of the antithesis between nominalism and realism, an anti- 
thesis the origin of which is to be found in the relation of 
Scholasticism to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. 
The nominalists were those who held universal notions 
(universalia) to be mere names, flatus vocis, empty con- 
ceptions without reality. With nominalism, there are no 
general notions, no genera, no species : all that is, exists 
only as a singular in its pure individuality ; and there is no 
such thing as pure thought, but only natural conception 
and sensuous perception. The realists again, by example 
of Plato, held firm by the objective reality of the univer- 
sal (universalia ante res). The antithesis of these opinions 
took form first as between Roscelinus and Anselm, the for- 
mer as nominalist, the latter as realist ; and it continues 
henceforth throughout the whole course of Scholasticism, 
K 



146 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

There began, however, as early as Abelard (b. 1079) 
an intermediate theory as well nominalistic as realistic, 
which after him, with unimportant modifications, remained, 
on the whole, the dominant one (universalia in rebus). In 
this view the universal is only conceived, only thought, 
but even so it is no mere product of consciousness ; 
no, it possesses also objective reality in the things them- 
selves, nor could it be abstracted from them, unless it 
were virtually contained in them. This identity of being 
and of thought is the presupposition and foundation on 
which the entire dialectic industry of the Scholastics 
rests. All their arguments found on the assumption that 
whatever is syllogistically proved has exactly the same 
constitution in actuality that it has in logical thought. 
If this presupposition fell, there fell with it the whole 
basis of Scholasticism ; leaving nothing for thought — 
thus at fault as regards its own objectivity — but to with- 
draw into its own self. In effect this self -produced dis- 
solution of Scholasticism made its appearance in William 
Ockam (d. 1347), the widely -influential reviver of nomi- 
nalism, which, powerful in the very beginning of Scholas- 
ticism, and now more powerful as opposed to a form of 
thought that was no longer growing but exhausted, with- 
drew the foundations from the whole structure of scho- 
lastic dogmatism and plunged it hopelessly in ruin. 



XXIII. — Transition to Modern Philosophy. 

THE struggle of the new philosophy with scholasticism, 
protracted throughout the entire fifteenth century 
in a series of intermediate events, reaches its termina- 
tion negatively in the course of the sixteenth, and posi- 
tively in the first half of the seventeenth century. 

1. The Fall of Scholasticism. — The proximate cause 
of this altered spirit of the time we have just seen : 
it is the internal decline of scholasticism itself. As soon 
as the tacit presupposition, which underlay the theology 
and whole method of scholasticism, — the rationality of the 
dogma, namely, or the applicability of scientific demon- 
stration to the matter of revelation, — was broken up, the 
entire structure, as already remarked, fell helplessly to 
the ground. The conception directly opposed to the 
principle of scholasticism, that it was possible for the 
same thing to be at once true to the dogma and false or 



TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 147 

at least indemonstrable to reason, — a point of view applied 
by the Aristotelian Pomponatius (1462-1530) to the im- 
mortality of the soul, and later by Vanini (see below) to 
the great problems of philosophy, — became, however much 
it was resisted by the church, ever more and more uni- 
versal, and brought with it a conviction of the impossibility 
of reconciling reason and revelation. The feeling that 
philosophy must be emancipated from its previous state 
of pupilage and servitude strengthened ; a struggle to- 
wards greater independency of research awoke ; and, 
though none durst turn as yet against the church itself, 
attempts were made to shake the authority of the main 
pillar of scholasticism, the philosophy of Aristotle, or 
what was then considered such. (Particularly distin- 
guished here was Petrus Ramus, 1515-1572, massacred on 
the Eve of St. Bartholomew.) The authority of the 
church declined more and more in the opinion of the 
nations, and the great systems of scholasticism ceased to 
be continued. 

2. Results of Scholasticism. — Notwithstanding all 
this, scholasticism was not without excellent results. 
Although completely in the service of the church, it 
originated in a scientific interest, and awoke consequently 
the spirit of free inquiry and a love of knowledge. It 
converted objects of faith into objects of thought ; raised 
men from the sphere of unconditional belief into the 
sphere of doubt, of search, of understanding ; and even 
when it sought to establish by argument the authority 
of faith, it was really establishing, contrary to its own 
knowledge and will, the authority of reason : it brought 
thus another principle into the world, different from that 
of the ancient church, the principle of intellect, the self- 
consciousness of reason ; or at least it prepared the way 
for the triumph of this principle. The very defects of 
the scholastics, their many absurd questions, their thou- 
sandfold useless and arbitrary distinctions, their curiosi- 
ties and subtilities, must be attributed to a rational 
principle, to the spirit of inquiry, the longing for light, 
which, oppressed by the authority of the church, was 
able to express itself only so, and not otherwise. Only 
when left behind by the advancing intelligence of the 
time, did scholasticism become untrue to its original 
import, and unite its interests with those of the church, 
exhibiting itself then, indeed, as the most violent oppo- 
nent of the new and better spirit. 



148 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

3. The Revival of Letters. — A chief instrument of 
that change in the spirit of the time, which marks the 
beginning of a new epoch for philosophy, was the revival 
of classical literature. The study of the ancients, especi- 
ally of the Greeks, had, in the course of the middle ages, 
ceased to be cultivated. The philosophy of Plato and of 
Aristotle was, for the most part, known only through 
Latin translations or secondary sources. All sense for 
beauty of form or taste in expression had died out. Of 
the spirit of classical life there was not left even a dream. 
But this was altered now, chiefly by the arrival in Italy 
of certain learned Greeks, fugitives from Constantinople. 
Under their influence the study of the ancients in the 
original sources came again into vogue ; the newly dis- 
covered printing-press multiplied copies of the classics ; 
the Medici drew scholars to their court; in particular 
Bessarion (d. 1472) and Ficinus (d. 1499) were influential 
in bringing about a better acquaintance with ancient 
philosophy. And so gradually a band of men classically 
educated opposed itself to the stereotyped,* uncritical, 
tasteless manner in which the sciences had been hitherto 
cultivated ; new ideas came into circulation ; and the free, 
universal, thinking spirit of antiquity was born afresh. 
Classical studies found a fruitful soil in Germany also. 
Beuchlin (b. 1455), Melanchthon, and Erasmus were their 
advocates ; and the humanistic party, in its hostility to 
the scholastic aims, belonged to the most decided in- 
fluences that were now in favour of the advancing cause 
of the Reformation. 

4. The Reformation. — All the new elements — the 
struggle against scholasticism, the interests of letters, the 
striving for national independency, the endeavours of the 
state and the corporations to emancipate themselves from 
the church and the hierarchy, the direction of men's 
minds to nature and actuality, above all the longing on 
the part of consciousness for autonomy, for freedom 
from the fetters of authority — all these elements found 
their rallying-point and their focus in the German Refor- 
mation. Originating primarily in national interests and 
interests of religious practice, falling early too into an erro- 
neous course, and issuing in a dogmatic ecclesiastical one- 
sidedness, the Reformation was still in its principle and 
genuine consequences a rupture of thought with authority, 
a protest against the shackles of the positive, a return of 
consciousness from its self- alienation into itself. Thought 



TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 149 

returned from the yonder to the here, from the extra- 
mundane to the intra-mundane : nature and the moral 
laws of nature, humanity as such, one's own heart, one's 
own conscience, subjective conviction, in short, the rights 
of the subject began at last to assume some value. 
Marriage, if considered hitherto not indeed immoral, but 
yet inferior to self-denial and celibacy, appeared now as 
something divine, as a law of nature imposed by God 
himself. Poverty, too, appeared no longer an object in 
itself ; though previously considered superior to riches, 
and though the contemplative life of the monk had hitherto 
ranked higher than the worldly activity of the layman 
supported by the labour of his hands. Religious freedom 
assumed the place of obedience (the third vow of the 
church) : monkhood and priesthood had come to an end. 
In the same way, with reference to knowledge, man re- 
turned to himself from the alien region of authority. He 
had become convinced that within himself must the 
entire work of salvation be accomplished ; that recon- 
ciliation and grace were his own business, and indepen- 
dent of the interposition of priests ; that he stood to God 
in a direct relation. In his belief, in his conviction, in 
the depths of his own soul, he found his only true 
being. As then Protestantism sprang from the same 
spirit as the new philosophy, it presupposes the closest 
connexion with this latter. Naturally, however, there 
will be a special distinction between the manner in which 
the new spirit realizes itself as religious principle, and 
that in which it realizes itself as scientific principle. 
But, as said, in both, in the Protestantism of religion as 
well as in the Protestantism of reason, this principle is 
one and the same ; and in the progress of history both 
interests are found to advance hand in hand. For, the 
reduction of religion to its simple elements (a reduction 
which Protestantism had once for all begun, but which 
it had only carried forward to the Bible, and there left), 
must of necessity be continued farther, and closed only 
with the ultimate, original, supra -historical elements, — 
that is, with reason, reason that knows itself the source 
of all philosophy as of all religion. 

5. The Growth of the Natural Sciences. — To all 
these movements, which are to be regarded not only as 
signs and symptoms, but as causes of the various revolu- 
tions of the epoch, there is yet another to be added, 
which very much facilitated and assisted the emancipa- 



150 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tion of philosophy from the fetters of the church, and 
that is, the coming into existence of natural science, and 
of the observation of nature by the method of experience. 
It is an epoch of the most penetrating and fruitful dis- 
coveries in the province of nature. The discovery of 
America and that of the maritime route to the Eastern 
Indies, had already widened the visible horizon ; but still 
greater revolutions are associated with the names of 
Copernicus (d. 1543), and Kepler (d. 1631), and Galileo 
(d. 1642), — revolutions which could not possibly remain 
without influenee on the prevalent idea of the uni- 
verse, and the entire mode of thought of the time, and 
which more especially produced a mighty inroad on the 
authority of the church. Scholasticism, withdrawn from 
nature and the world of experience, blind to that which 
lay at its feet, had lived in a dreamlike intellectualism ; 
but nature was restored to honour now, and became, in 
her majesty and her glory, in her fulness and her endless- 
ness, again the immediate object of contemplation ; while 
natural investigation demonstrated itself as an essential 
object of philosophy, and empirical science consequently 
as a universal human interest. From this epoch empirical 
science dates its historical importance ; and only from this 
epoch does it possess a continuous history. The conse- 
quences of the new movement admit of an easy estimate. 
Scientific inquiry not only destroyed a variety of trans- 
mitted errors and prejudices, but, what was highly impor- 
tant, it turned the thoughts and attention of men to the 
mundane, to the actual ; fostering and encouraging the 
habit of reflection, the feeling of self-dependence, the 
awakened spirit of scrutiny and doubt. The position of a 
science of observation and experiment presupposes an in- 
dependent self -consciousness on the part of the individual, 
a wresting of himself loose from authority and the creed of 
authority, — in a word, it presupposes scepticism. Hence 
the originators of modern philosophy, Bacon and Des- 
cartes, began with scepticism ; the former in requiring an 
abstraction from all prejudices and preconceived opinions 
as condition of the study of nature, and the latter in his 
postulate, to doubt at first all. No wonder that between 
natural science and ecclesiastical orthodoxy there pre- 
sently broke out an envenomed struggle, — a struggle 
which was to cease only with the overthrow of the 
latter. 

6. Bacon of Verulam. — The philosopher who, for 



TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 151 

principle, consciously adopted experience, or an observ- 
ing and experimenting investigation of nature, and that, 
too, in express contrast to scholasticism and the previous 
method of science, and who, on that account, is fre- 
quently placed at the head of modern philosophy, is (the 
just named) Bacon, Baron of Verulam (b. 1561, Lord- 
Keeper of the Great Seal, and Lord Chancellor under 
James I., subsequently disgraced, d. 1626 — a man not 
without weaknesses of character). 

The sciences, says Bacon, have hitherto found them- 
selves in a most deplorable condition. Philosophy, lost 
in barren and fruitless logomachies, has, during so many 
centuries, produced not a single work or experiment 
capable of bringing any actual advantage to the ]ife of 
the race. Logic hitherto has subserved rather the con- 
firmation of error than the investigation of truth. How 
is this ? From what does this poverty of the sciences in 
the past proceed ? From this, that they have been sepa- 
rated from their root in nature and experience. Several 
causes are responsible for this : first, the old and inveterate 
prejudice that man would derogate from his own dignity, 
did he occupy himself much or long with experiments 
and the things of matter ; secondly, superstition, and 
the blind fanaticism of religion, which in every age has 
proved itself the irreconcilable foe to natural science; 
thirdly, the exclusive attention of the Romans to morals 
and politics, and of the better heads among Chris- 
tians to these and to theology ; fourthly, the veneration 
of antiquity and the overwhelming authority of certain 
philosophers ; lastly, a certain despondency and despair 
of being able to overcome the many and great difficulties 
which oppose themselves to the investigation of nature. 
To all these causes the depression of the sciences is to 
be traced. "What is wanted now, then, is a thorough 
renewal, regeneration, and reformation of the sciences 
from their lowest foundations upwards : we must find at 
all costs, a new basis of knowledge, new principles of 
science. This reformation and radical cure of the sciences 
is dependent on two conditions : objectively, on the re- 
duction of science to experience and the study of nature ; 
subjectively, on the purification of the mind and intellect 
from all abstract theories and transmitted prejudices. 
These conditions united yield the true method of natural 
science, which is no other than the method of induction. 
On correct induction depends the salvation of science. 



152 HISTOR Y OF PHILOSOPH T. 

Bacon's philosophy is comprised in these propositions. 
His historical import, then, is in general this, that he 
directed anew the observation and reflection of his contem- 
poraries to actual fact, proximately to nature ; that he 
raised experience, which hitherto had been only matter 
of chance, into a separate and independent object of 
thought ; and that he awoke a general consciousness of its 
indispensable necessity. To have established the prin- 
ciple of empirical science, of a thinking exploration of 
nature, this is his merit. But still only in the proposing 
of this principle does his import lie : of any contained 
matter of the Baconian philosophy, we can, in rigour, not 
speak ; although he has attempted (in his work De Aug- 
mentis Scientiarum), a systematic encyclopaedia of the 
sciences on a new principle of classification, and has 
scattered through his writings a profusion of fine and 
fertile observations (which are still in vogue for mottoes). 

7. The Italian Philosophers of the Transition 
Period. — With Bacon there must be mentioned some 
others who prepared the way for the introduction of the 
new philosophy. First of all a series of Italian philoso- 
phers who belonged to the second half of the sixteenth 
and first half of the seventeenth century. With the ten- 
dencies of the period already described, these philoso- 
phers cohere in two ways : firstly, in their enthusiasm 
for nature, an enthusiasm which, with all of them, has 
more or less of a pantheistic character (Vanini, for ex- 
ample, entitled one of his writings, ' Of the wonderful 
Secrets of the Queen and Goddess of Mortals, Nature '), 
and secondly, in their devotion to the ancient systems 
of philosophy. The best known of them are these : 
Cardan (1501-1575), Campanetta (1568-1639), Giordano 
Bruno (-1600), Vanini (1586-1619). They were all men 
of passionate, enthusiastic, impetuous nature ; wild, un- 
settled character ; roving and adventurous life : men 
animated by an intense thirst for knowledge, but who 
gave way withal to extravagant wildness of imagina- 
tion, and to a mania for secret astrological and geo- 
mantic arts ; on which account they passed away without 
leaving any fruitful or enduring result. They were all 
persecuted by the hierarchy ; two of them (Bruno and 
Vanini) perished at the stake. In their entire historical 
appearance they are, like the eruptions of a volcano, 
rather precursors and prophets, than originators and 
founders of a new era of philosophy. 



TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 153 

The most important of them is Giordano Bruno. He 
revived the old (Stoic) idea, that the world is a living 
being, and that a single soul pervades the universe. The 
burthen of all his thoughts is the deepest enthusiasm for 
nature, and for the reason which lives and works in nature. 
This reason, according to him, is the artificer within, who 
fashions matter, and reveals himself in the shapes of the 
world. Out from the interior of the root, or of the seed- 
grain, he causes the stems to spring, from these the 
branches, from the branches boughs, and so on to buds 
and leaves and flowers. All is inwardly planned, pre- 
pared, and perfected. In the same way does this univer- 
sal reason, from its place within, recall the sap from 
the fruits and the blossoms, to the branches, etc. , again. 
The world is thus an infinite animal in which all lives 
and moves in the most varied manner. Bruno charac- 
terizes the relation of reason to matter quite in the Aris- 
totelian way : they are to each other as form and matter, 
as actuality and potentiality ; neither is without the other ; 
form is the internal impelling power of matter, matter 
as infinite possibility, as infinitely f ormable, is the mother 
of all forms. The other side of Brnno's philosophizing, 
his theory of the forms of knowledge (Topic), which takes 
up the greater part of his writings, as of smaller philo- 
sophical value, shall be here omitted. 

8. Jacob Bohm. — Like Bacon in England, and Bruno 
in Italy, Bohm bespeaks in Germany the same movement 
of transition that is now before us. Each of the three in 
a manner that is characteristic of his nationality : Bacon 
as champion of empiricism, Bruno as representative of a 
poetic pantheism, Bohm as father of theosophical mys- 
ticism. In depth of principle, Bohm belongs to a much 
later period ; but in imperfection of form he retrocedes to 
the time of the middle-age mystics ; while, in an historico- 
genetic point of view, again, he is connected with the 
German Reformation and the various Protestant elements 
at that time in ferment. We shall best place him among 
the precursors and prophets of the new era. 

Jacob Bohm was born in 1575, at Altseidenburg, not 
far from Gorlitz, in Upper Lusatia. His parents were 
poor country-people. "When a boy he herded the cattle ; 
when older, and after he had learned in the village -school 
to read and barely write, he was apprenticed to a shoe- 
maker in Gorlitz ; and finally, having accomplished his 
travels as journeyman, he settled down, in 1594, at Gor- 



154 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, 

litz, as master of his trade. He had experienced revela- 
tions or mysterious visions even in his youth, but still 
more at a later period, when the longing for truth took 
possession of him, and his soul, already disquieted by the 
religious conflicts of the time, found itself in a state of 
highly-wrought excitement. Besides the Bible, Bohm 
had read only a few mystic books of theosophic and 
alchemistic import, for example, those of Paracelsus. 
Now, then, that he set himself to the writing down of 
his thoughts, or, as he called them, his visions (illumina- 
tions), the want of all previous culture at once disclosed 
itself. Hence the painful struggling of the thought with 
the expression, which not unfrequently, nevertheless, at- 
tains to dialectic point and poetic beauty. In conse- 
quence of his first work Aurora, composed in the year 
1612, Bohm fell into trouble with the rector at Gorlitz, 
Gregorius Bichter, who publicly denounced the book from 
the pulpit, and even reviled the person of its author. 
He was prohibited by the magistrates from the writing of 
books, an interdict which he observed for years, till at 
length the edict of the spirit became all too strong in 
him, and he resumed composition. Bohm was a plain, 
quiet, gentle, and modest man. He died in 1 624. 

It is exceedingly difficult to give in a few words any 
statement of the theosophy of Bohm, inasmuch as Bohm 
has been able to give birth to his thoughts, not in the 
form of thoughts, but in that of sensuous figures, of ob- 
scure images of nature, and for the expression of them 
has frequently availed himself of the strangest and most 
arbitrary expedients. There reigns in his writings a 
twilight, so to speak, as in a Gothic dome, 1 into which the 
light falls through windows variously stained. Hence 
the magical effect which he produces on many minds. 
The main thought of Bohm's philosophizing is this : that 
self-distinction, inner diremption, is the essential charac- 
ter of spirit, and consequently of God, so far as God is to 
be conceived as spirit. To Bohm God is a living spirit 
only if, and so far as, he comprehends within himself 
difference from himself, and through this other, this 
difference within himself, is manifest, is an object, is a 
cognising consciousness. The difference of God in God 
is alone the source of his and of all actuosity and sponta- 
neity, the spring and jet of self -actuating life, that out of 
its own self creates and produces consciousness. Bohm is 
exhaustless in metaphors to render intelligible this nega- 

i See Preface, p. xi 



TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 155 

tivity in God, this self -differentiation and self-externali- 
zation of God into a world. Vast width without end, he 
says, stands in need of a straitness and confiningness in 
which it may manifest itself ; for in width without con- 
finement manifestation were impossible : there must, 
therefore, be a drawing-in and a closing-in through which 
a manifestation may be realized. See, he elsewhere ex- 
claims, were will only of one sort, then mind had only 
one quality, and were a moveless thing, that lay ever 
still, and did nothing further than always one and the 
same thing ; there were no joy in it, neither any art nor 
science of severals, and there were no wisdom ; all were 
a nothing, and there were properly no mind nor will to 
anything, for all were only the sole and single. It can- 
not be said, then, that the entire God is in a single will 
and a single being : there is a difference. Nothing with- 
out contrariety can become manifest to itself ; for were 
there nothing to resist it, it would proceed perpetually 
of itself outwards, and would not return again into it- 
self ; but if it enter not again into itself, as into that 
out of which it originally went, nothing is known to it 
of its primal being. Bbhm expresses the above thought 
quite perfectly, when, in his answer to theosophical ques- 
tions, he says : the reader is to understand that in Yes 
and No consist all things, be they divine, diabolic, ter- 
restrial, or however they may be named. The One, as the 
Yes, is pure power and love, and it is the truth of God, 
and God himself. He were in cognisable in Himself, and 
in Him there were no joy or upliftingness, nor yet feeling, 
without the No. The No is a counter-stroke of the Yes, 
or of the truth, in order that the truth may be manifest 
and a something, wherein there may be a contrarium, 
wherein there may be the eternal love, moving, feeling, 
and willing. For a one has nothing in itself that it can 
will, unless it double itself that it may be two ; neither 
can it feel itself in oneness, but in twoness it feels itself. 
In short, without difference, without antithesis, without 
duality, there is, according to Bohm, no knowledge, no 
consciousness possible ; only in its other, in its oppo- 
site (that is yet identical with its own being), does some- 
thing become clear and conscious to itself. It lay at 
hand to connect this fundamental idea, the thought of a 
one that in itself differentiated itself, with the doctrine 
of the Trinity ; and the trinitarian schema accordingly, 
in many an application and illustration, underlies Bohm's 



156 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

conception of the divine life and differentiating process. 
Schelling afterwards took up anew these ideas of Bohm's, 
and philosophically reconstructed them. 

"Were we to assign to the theosophy of Bohm a place 
in the history of the development of later philosophy 
correspondent to the inner worth of its principle, we 
should most appropriately set it as a complement over 
against the system of Spinoza. If Spinoza teaches the re- 
flux of everything finite into the eternal One, Bohm de- 
monstrates the efflux, the issue, of the finite out of the 
eternal One, and the inner necessity of this efflux and 
issue, inasmuch as, without self-diremption, the being of 
this One were rather a non-being. Compared with Des- 
cartes, Bohm has certainly more profoundly seized the 
notion of self-consciousness and the relation of the finite 
to God. His historical position, however, is in other re- 
spects much too isolated and exceptional, his form of 
statement much too troubled, to allow us to incorporate 
him without any hesitation in a series of systematic 
evolutions otherwise continuous and genetically coherent. 



XXIV.— Descartes. 

THE originator and father of modern philosophy is 
Descartes. Whilst, on the one hand, like the 
thinkers of the transition-period, he has completely 
broken with previous philosophy, and once again con- 
sidered all from the very beginning ; he has, on the other 
hand, again, not merely, like Bacon, proposed a principle 
that is only methodological ; or, like Bohm and the con- 
temporary Italians, given expression to philosophical 
glances without methodic foundation ; but he has, from 
the stand-point of entire freedom from presupposition, 
introduced a new, positive, materially full, philosophical 
principle, and then endeavoured to develop from it, by 
method of continuous proof, the leading propositions of 
a system. The want of presupposition and the new- 
ness of his principle constitute him the originator, its 
inner fruitfulness the founder of modern philosophy. 

Bene* Descartes (Renatus Cartesius), was born in 1596 
at La Haye in Touraine. Already in his early years, dis- 
satisfied with the prevalent philosophy, or rather alto- 
gether sceptical in its regard, he resolved, on completion 
of his studies, to bid adieu to all school learning, and 



DESCARTES. 157 

henceforward to gain knowledge only from himself and 
the great book of the world, from nature and the obser- 
vation of man. When twenty years of age, he exchanged 
the life of science for the life of the camp, serving as a 
volunteer first under Maurice of Orange, and afterwards 
under Tilly. The inclination to philosophical and mathe- 
matical inquiries was too powerful in him, however, to 
allow him permanently to quit these. In 1621, the 
design of a reformation of science on a firmer foundation, 
being now, after long internal struggles, ripe within him, 
he left the army ; passed some time in various pretty ex- 
tensive travels ; made a considerable stay in Paris ; aban- 
doned finally his native country in 1 629 ; and betook 
himself to Holland, in order to live there unknown and 
undisturbed wholly for philosophy and the prosecution of 
his scientific projects. In Holland, though not without 
many vexatious interferences on the part of fanatical 
theologians, he lived twenty years, till in 1649, in conse- 
quence of an invitation on the part of Queen Christina of 
Sweden, he left it for Stockholm, where, however, he died 
the very next year, 1650. 

The subject-matter of the philosophy of Descartes, and 
the course it took in his own mind, may be concisely 
stated in the following summary : — 

(a.) If we are ever to establish any fixed and per- 
manent article of knowledge, we must begin with the 
foundation, we must root out and destroy every presup- 
position and assumption to which from our childhood we 
may have been accustomed, — in a word, we must doubt all 
things that appear even in the least degree uncertain. 
We must not only doubt, therefore, of the existence of the 
things of sense, since the senses often deceive, but even 
of the truths of mathematics and geometry : for however 
certain the proposition may appear, that the sum of two 
and three is five, or that a square has four sides, we can- 
not know whether any truth of knowledge is at all in- 
tended for us finite beings, whether God has not created 
us rather for mere opinion and error. It is advisable, 
therefore, to doubt all, nay, even to deny all, to assume 
all as false, (b. ) In thus assuming everything as false, 
in regard to which any doubt can be at all entertained, 
there is one thing, nevertheless, that we cannot deny : 
this truth, namely, that we ourselves, we who so think, 
exist. Precisely from this rather, that I assume all things 
as false, that I doubt all things, there evidently follows 



158 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

my own existence, the existence even in doubting, of the 
subject that doubts. The proposition, consequently, 
I think, therefore I am (Cogito, ergo sum), is the first, 
most certain proposition that meets every one who 
attempts to philosophize. On this most certain of 
all propositions depends the certainty of all other 
articles of knowledge. The objection of Gassendi, that 
existence may be equally well inferred from every 
other human function, as from that of thought, — that 
it may be equally well said, I walk, therefore I am, 
— does not apply, for of none of my actions am I abso- 
lutely certain, unless of my thought, (c.) From the pro- 
position, I think, therefore I am, there follows further 
now the whole constitution of the nature of spirit. In 
investigating, namely, who then are we, who thus hold 
all things for false that are different from us, we see 
clearly that, without destroying our personality, we can 
think away from ourselves everything that belongs to us, 
except our thought alone. Thought persists, even when 
it denies all else. There cannot belong any extension, 
therefore, any figure, or anything else that the body may 
possess, to our true nature : to that there can belong 
thought only. 1 am, then, essentially a thinking being, 
or thinking being simply, that is to say, spirit, soul, in- 
telligence, reason. To think is my substance. The mind, 
then, can be perfectly and clearly known in itself, in its 
own independency, without any of the attributes that 
attach to the body ; in its notion there is nothing that 
belongs to the notion of body. It is impossible, conse- 
quently, to apprehend it by means of any sensuous con- 
ception, or to form to one's-self a picture of it : it is 
apprehended wholly and solely through pure intelligence. 
(d.) From the proposition, I think, therefore I am, there 
follows still further the universal rule of all certainty. 
I am certain that, because I think, I exist. What is it 
that gives me the certainty of this proposition ? Evi- 
dently nothing else than the clear perception that it is 
impossible for any one to think and not be. From this, 
then, there follows of itself, and for all other know- 
ledge, the criterion of certainty : that is certain, what- 
ever I recognise as clearly and evidently true, whatever 
my reason recognises as true with the same irresistible 
distinctness as the above cogito ergo sum. (e.) This rule, 
however, is only a principle of certainty, it does not sup- 
ply me yet with a knowledge of the body of truth. We 



DESCARTES. 159 

review, therefore, under application of the rule, all our 
thoughts or ideas, in order to discover something that 
shall be objectively true. But our ideas are partly in- 
nate, partly contributed from without, partly formed 
by ourselves. Amongst them all we find that of God 
eminent and first. The question occurs, Whence do we 
get this idea ? Evidently not from ourselves : this idea 
can only be implanted in us by a being that possesses in 
his own nature the complete fulness of every perfection ; 
that is, it can be implanted in us only by an actually 
existent God. On the question, how is it that I am 
capable of thinking a nature more perfect than my own ? 
I find myself always driven to this answer, that I must 
have received it from some being, whose nature actually 
is more perfect. All the attributes of God, the more I 
contemplate them, demonstrate that the ideas of them 
could not be produced by me alone. For although I 
may possess the idea of a substance, as I am a substance, 
the same reason would dispossess me of the idea of infinite 
substance, as I am only finite substance. Such an idea 
as infinite substance can be produced in me only by an 
actually infinite substance. And let it not be thought 
that the notion of the infinite is acquired by means of 
abstraction and negation, as darkness, it may be, is nega- 
tion of light ; for I see rather that the infinite has more 
reality than the finite, and that therefore the notion of 
the infinite must, in a certain sort, be earlier in me than 
that of the finite. But if this clear and distinct idea, 
which I have of infinite substance, possesses more objec- 
tive reality than any other, neither is there any other of 
which I can possibly have less reason to doubt. It re- 
mains, then, knowing, as I now do, that it is from God 
that the idea of God has come to me, only to investigate 
in what manner it has come. It cannot possibly have 
been acquired through the senses, whether consciously 
or unconsciously ; for ideas of sense originate in external 
affections of the organs of sense, and it is self-evident 
that no such origin can be predicated of it. Neither can 
I have invented it, for I can as little add to, as subtract 
from it. But as we have seen, if it is not contributed 
from without, and if it is not formed by myself, it must 
be innate — just as the idea of my own self is innate. The 
first proof that can be led for the existence of God, then, 
is, that I find the idea of God existing in me, and that of 
this existence there must be a cause. Further, I infer 



160 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the existence of God from my own imperfection, and, in 
particular, from my knowledge of it. For as I am ac- 
quainted with certain perfections which belong not to my- 
self, there must evidently exist a being more perfect than 
I am, on whom I, for my part, depend, and from whom I 
have received whatever I possess. The best and most 
evident proof for the existence of God, finally, is the 
proof that follows from the very notion of him. My 
mind, in observing amongst its various ideas one that is 
the most eminent of all, that namely of the most perfect 
being, perceives also that this idea not only possesses, 
like all the rest, the possibility of existence, that is, con- 
tingent existence, but that it likewise involves necessary 
existence. Just as I infer for every possible triangle that 
equality of its three angles to two right angles which lies 
in the idea of the triangle in general, so from the neces- 
sary existence that belongs to the idea of the most perfect 
being, do I infer his actual existence. No other idea that 
I possess involves necessary existence, but from this idea 
of the Supreme Being, necessary existence is, without con- 
tradiction, inseparable. It is only our prejudices that 
prevent us from seeing this. Because we are accustomed, 
namely, in the case of all other things, to separate the 
notion of them from the existence of them, and because 
also we often form ideas in our own fancy, it is easy for 
us, in regard to the Supreme Being, to fall into doubt as 
to whether this idea too be not one of the fancied ones, 
or at least such as does not in its notion involve existence. 
This proof is essentially different from that of Anselm of 
Canterbury, as disputed by Thomas, the reasoning of which 
is this : — * Consideration demonstrates the word God to 
mean that which must be thought as what is greatest ; 
but to be in actuality as well as in thought, is greater 
than to be in thought alone ; therefore, God exists not 
only in thought, but in fact.' But this conclusion is 
manifestly vicious, and we ought to infer instead, There- 
fore God must be thought as existing in fact ; from which 
proposition plainly the reality of his existence is no neces- 
sary result. My proof, on the other hand, is this : what- 
ever we clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to the 
true and unalterable nature of anything, to its essence, 
its form, that may be predicated of it. Now we found, 
on investigating God, that existence belongs to his true 
and unalterable nature, and, therefore, we may legi- 
timately predicate existence of God. In the idea of the 



DESCARTES. 161 

most perfect being necessary existence is involved, not 
because of any fiction of our understanding, but because 
existence belongs to his eternal and unalterable nature. 
(/.) This result, tbe existence of God, is of the greatest 
consequence. At first it was obligatory on us to re- 
nounce all certainty, and to doubt of everything, because 
we knew not whether error belonged not to the nature of 
man, whether God had not created us to err. But now 
we know, by reference to the innate idea and the neces- 
sary attributes of God, that he possesses veracity, and 
that it were a contradiction did he deceive us or cause in 
us error. For even if the ability to deceive were re- 
garded as a proof of superiority, the will to deceive would 
be certainly a proof of wickedness. Our reason conse- 
quently can never apprehend an object that were pos- 
sibly untrue, so far, that is, as it is apprehended, or so 
far as it is clearly and distinctly known. For God were 
justly to be named a deceiver, had he given us so per- 
verted a judgment that it took falsehood for truth. And 
thus the absolute doubt with which we began is now re- 
moved. All certainty flows for us from the being of God. 
Assured of the existence of an undeceiving God, it is 
enough, for the certainty of any knowledge, that we 
clearly and distinctly know its object, (g.) From the 
true idea of God there result the principles of natural 
philosophy, or the theory of the duality of substance. 
That is substance which requires for its existence the 
existence of nothing else. In this (highest) sense only 
God is substance. God as infinite substance has the 
ground of his existence in himself, is the cause of him- 
self. The two created substances, on the contrary, 
thinking substance and bodily substance, mind and mat- 
ter, are substances only in the less restricted sense of the 
term ; they may be placed under the common definition, 
that they are things requiring for their existence only the 
co-operation of God. Each of these two substances has 
an attribute constitutive of its nature and being, and to 
which all its other characteristics may be collectively re- 
duced. Extension is the attribute and being of matter ; 
thought is the being of spirit. For everything else that 
may be predicated of body presupposes extension, and is 
but a mode of extension, while, similarly, everything 
that we find in spirit is only a modification of thought. 
A substance to which thought directly appertains is 
called spirit, a substance which is the immediate sub- 

L 



162 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

strate of extension is called body. Thought and exten- 
sion are not only different from each other, but it is the 
very nature of these substances to negate each other ; for 
spirit is not only cognizable without the attributes of 
body, but it is in itself the negation of the attributes of 
body. Spirit and body are essentially diverse, and possess 
nothing in common. (7i.) In an anthropological reference 
(to omit the physics of Descartes, as only of subordinate 
interest philosophically), there results from this anta- 
gonistic relation between spirit and matter, a similar 
antagonistic relation between soul and body. Matter 
being essentially extension, spirit essentially thought, and 
neither having anything in common, the union of soul 
and body can only be conceived as a mechanical one. 
The body, for its part, is to be regarded as an automaton 
artificially constructed by God, as it were a statue 
or a machine formed by God of earth. In this body 
there dwells the soul, closely, but not inwardly, con- 
nected with it. The union of the two is but a forcible 
collocation, since both, as self-subsistent factors, are not 
only different from each other, but essentially opposed to 
each other. The self-dependent body is a completed 
machine, in which the accession of the soul alters nothing ; 
the latter, indeed, may produce certain additional move- 
ments in the former, but the wheel- work of this machine 
remains as it was. The indwelling thought alone dis- 
tinguishes this machine from others ; and the lower ani- 
mals, consequently, as unpossessed of self- consciousness 
and thought, are necessarily assigned only the same rank 
as other machines. It is here, now, that the question of 
the seat of the soul becomes of interest. If body and soul 
are mutually independent, essentially opposed substances, 
it will be impossible for them to interpenetrate and per- 
vade each other ; contact of any kind, indeed, will be im- 
possible between them unless by force, and in a single 
point. This point in which the soul has its seat is not to 
Descartes the whole brain, but only the inmost part of it, 
a small gland in the midst of its substance, which is named 
the pineal gland. The proof of this assumption depends on 
the circumstance that all the other parts of the brain are 
double, and consequently disqualified from acting as 
organ of the soul, which, so provided, would necessarily 
perceive things in a twofold manner. There is no other 
spot in the body capable of uniting impressions equally 
with the pineal gland, and this gland, therefore, is the 



DESCARTES. 163 

capital seat of the soul, and the locus of formation for all 
our thoughts. 

Having thus developed the leading ideas of the Carte- 
sian system, we shall now concisely recapitulate the 
characteristics of its historical and philosophical position. 
Descartes is the founder of a new epoch in philosophy, 
because, firstly, he enunciated the postulate of an entire 
removal of any presupposition. This absolute protest 
maintained by Descartes against the acceptance of any- 
thing for true, because it is so given to us, or so found 
by us, and not something determined and established by 
thought, became thenceforward the fundamental prin- 
ciple of the moderns. Descartes first proposed, secondly, 
the principle of self -consciousness, of the pure, self -subsis- 
tent ego, or the conception of mind, thinking substance, as 
individual self, as a singular ego — a new principle, a con- 
ception unknown to antiquity. Descartes, thirdly, gave 
complete distinctness to the antithesis of being and 
thought, existence and consciousness ; and announced the 
conciliation of this antithesis as a philosophical problem 
— the problem, for the future, of all modern philosophy. 
But these great ideas, distinctive of an epoch in the history 
of philosophy, are suggestive, at the same time, of the 
philosophical defects of the Cartesian system. Firstly, 
Descartes empirically assumed the constituents of his sys- 
tem, particularly his three substances. It appears, indeed, 
from the protest with which the system begins, that 
nothing ready-given or ready-found is to be assumed, 
but that all is to be deduced from thought. But this 
protest is not so serious in the event ; what has been 
apparently set aside is taken up again unchanged, 
once the principle of certainty has been made good. 
And hence it is that Descartes finds ready to hand, 
directly given, as well the idea of God as the two sub- 
stances. In order to deduce them, he appears, indeed, 
to abstract from much that is empirically present, but 
when he has abstracted from everything else, the two 
substances remain behind in the end simply as residue. 
That is, then, they are empirically assumed. It is a 
second defect that Descartes isolates the two sides of the 
antithesis, thought and being, in their mutual relation. 
He makes both, ' substances ; * elements, that is, which 
mutually exclude and negate each other. The being of 
matter he places only in extension, or in pure self- 
excludedness ; that of spirit only in thought, or intension, 



1 64 HI ST OR Y OF PHIL OSOPH Y. 

pure self-includedness. They stand opposed to each 
other like centrifugal and centripetal forces. But with 
such a conception of spirit and matter any internal assi- 
milation of them becomes impossible; where the two 
sides meet and unite, as in man, this they are enabled to 
do only by a forcible act of creation, only by the divine 
assistance. Deseartes, nevertheless, demands and en- 
deavours to find a conciliation of the two sides. But 
precisely the inability really to overcome the dualism of 
his position is the third and capital defect of his sys- 
tem. It is true that in the statement, ' I think, there- 
fore I am,' or * I am thinking,' the two sides, being and 
thinking, are conjoined together, but then they are so 
conjoined only to be established as mutually independent. 
To the question, How does the ego relate itself to what is 
extended ? it can only be answered, As thinking, that is, 
as negative, as excludent. And thus for the conciliation 
of the two sides there remains only the idea of God. 
Both substances are created by God, both are held to- 
gether by the will of God, and through the idea of God 
is it that the ego obtains the certainty of the existence 
of what is extended. God is thus, in a measure, a deus 
ex machina, in order to bring about the unity of the ego 
with the matter of extension. The externality of any 
such process is obvious. 

It is this defect in the system of Descartes that acts as 
conditioning motive to the systems that follow. 



XXV. — Geulinx and Malebranche. 

DESCAETES had placed mind and matter, conscious- 
ness and the world, in complete separation from 
each other. Both are for him substances, independent 
powers, mutually exclusive contraries. Spirit (that is to 
say, in his conception, the simple self, the ego) is essen- 
tially what distinguishes itself from, what excludes, mat- 
ter, — what abstracts from sense. Matter, on the other 
hand, is essentially what is opposed to thought. But the 
relation of the two principles being thus determined, the 
question involuntarily occurs, How then is it possible for 
any connexion to have place between them ? Both being 
absolutely different, nay, mutually opposed, how is it pos- 
sible for the affections of the body, on the one hand, to 
act on the soul, and how, on the other hand, is it pos- 



GEULIXX AXD MALEBRANCHE. 165 

sible for the volitions of the soul to act on the body ? It 
was at this point that the Cartesian Arnold Geulinx 
(born 1625 at Antwerp, died 1669 as Professor of Philo- 
sophy at Leyden), took up the system of Descartes in 
order to procure for it a more consistent form. For his 
part, Geulinx is of opinion that neither the soul acts 
directly on the body, nor the body directly on the soul. 
Not the former : since I can at discretion manifoldly de- 
termine or influence my body, but I am not the cause of 
this, for I know not how it happens, T know not in what 
manner influence is propagated from my brain to my 
limbs, and I cannot possibly suppose myself to do that in 
regard to which I am unable to understand how it is 
done. But if I am unable to produce movement within 
my body, still less must I be able to produce movement 
without my body. I am only a spectator of this world, 
then ; the only action that is mine, that remains for me, 
is contemplation. But this very contemplation can only 
take place mysteriously. For how do we obtain our per- 
ception of an external world ? The external world can- 
not possibly act directly on us. For, even if the external 
objects cause, in the act of vision say, an image in my 
eye, or an impression in my brain, as if in so much wax, 
this impression, or this image, is still something corporeal 
or material merely ; it cannot enter into my spirit, 
therefore, which is essentially disparate from matter. 
There is nothing left us, then, but to seek in God the 
means of uniting the two sides. It is God alone who can 
conform outer to inner, inner to outer ; who, convert- 
ing external objects into internal ideas, — ideas of the 
soul, — can render visible to the latter the world of sense, 
and realize the determinations of the will within into 
facts without. Every operation, then, that combines outer 
and inner, the soul and the world, is neither an effect 
of the spirit nor of the world, but simply an immediate 
act of God. When I exercise volition, consequently, it i3 
not from my will, but from the will of God that the pro- 
posed bodily motions follow. On occasion of my will, 
God moves my body ; on occasion of an affection of my 
body, God excites an idea in my mind : the one is but the 
occasional cause of the other (and hence the name, Occa- 
sionalism, of this theory). My will, nevertheless, moves 
not the mover to move my limbs ; but he who im- 
parted motion to matter, and assigned it its laws, even 
he created my will also, and he has so united together 



166 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

these most diverse things, material motion and men- 
tal volition, that, when my will wills, such a movement 
follows as it wills, and when the movement follows, 
my will wills it, not that either, however, acts or exerts 
physical influence on the other. On the contrary, just 
as the agreement of two watches which go so perfectly 
together, that both strike exactly the same hour at once, 
results not from any mutual influence on their part, but 
simply from the fact that they were both set together ; 
so the agreement of the bodily motion and the mental 
volition depends only on that sublime artificer who has 
produced in them this inexplicable community. Geulinx, 
then, it is obvious, has only brought the fundamental 
dualism of Descartes to its ultimate point. If Descartes 
called the union of soul and body a violent collocation, 
Geulinx calls it, in so many words, a miracle. The strict 
consequence of such a conception, then, is, that there is 
possible not any immanent, but only a transcendent prin- 
ciple of union. 

2. Analogous to the theory of Geulinx, and equally at 
the same time only a consequence and further extension 
of the philosophizing of Descartes, is the philosophical 
position of Nicholas Malebranche (born at Paris 1638 ; en- 
tered, at the age of twenty -two, the congregation de Vora- 
toire, determined to the prosecution of philosophy by the 
writings of Descartes; died, after many troubles with 
theological opponents, 1715). 

Malebranche takes his point of departure from the 
Cartesian view of the relation between soul and body. 
These are rigorously distinguished from each other, 
and in their essence mutually opposed. How does the 
soul (the ego) attain, then, to a knowledge of the exter- 
nal world, to ideas of corporeal things? For only in the 
spiritual form of ideas is it possible for external, and, in 
particular, material things, to be present in spirit ; or the 
soul cannot have the thing itself, but only an idea of it, 
the thing itself remaining without the soul. The soul 
can derive these ideas neither from itself, nor from 
things. Not from itself : for any power of gene- 
rating the ideas of things purely from its own self, can- 
not be ascribed to the soul as a limited being ; what is 
merely an idea of the soul does not on that account 
actually exist, and what actually exists depends not for 
its existence and apprehension on the goodwill of the 
soul ; the ideas of things are given to us, they are no pro- 



GEUL1NX AND MALEBRANCHE. 167 

duction of our own thought. But just as little does the 
soul derive these ideas from the things themselves. It is 
impossible to think that impressions of material things 
take place on the soul, which is immaterial, not to mention 
that these infinitely numerous and complex impressions 
would, in impinging on one another, reciprocally derange 
and destroy one another. The soul, then, — there is no 
other resource, — must see things in a third something 
that is above the antithesis, that is, in God. God, the 
absolute substance, contains all things in himself, he sees 
all things in himself according to their true nature and 
beirtg. For the same reason in him, too, are the ideas of 
all things ; he is the entire world as an intellectual or 
ideal world. It is God, then, who is the means of medi- 
ating between the ego and the world. In him we see 
the ideas, inasmuch as we ourselves are so completely 
contained in him, so accurately united to him, that wo 
may call him the place of spirits. Our volition and our 
sensation in reference to things proceed from him ; it is 
he who retains together the objective and the subjective 
worlds, which, in themselves, are separate and apart. 

The philosophy of Malebranche, then, in its single 
leading thought that we see and know all things in God, 
demonstrates itself to be, like the occasionalism of Geu- 
linx, a special attempt to overcome tlje dualism of the 
Cartesian philosophy on its own principles and under its 
own presuppositions. 

3. Two defects or inner contradictions of the philo- 
sophy of Descartes are now apparent. Descartes con- 
ceives mind and matter as substances, as mutually ex- 
clusive contraries, and sets himself forthwith to find their 
union. But any union in the case of such presupposi- 
tions can only be one-sided and external. Thought and 
existence being each a substance, must only negate 
and mutually exclude each other. Unnatural theories, 
like the above, become, then, unavoidable consequences. 
The simplest remedy is this, to abandon the presupposi- 
tion, to remove its independency from either contrary, 
to conceive both not as substances, but as forms of 
the manifestation of a substance. This remedy is parti- 
cularly indicated and suggested by another circumstance. 
According to Descartes, God is the infinite substance, — in 
the special sense of the word, the only substance. Mind 
and matter are also, indeed, substances, but only in re- 
lation to each other ; while in relation to God, again, 



168 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tliey are dependent and not substances. This, properly 
speaking, is a contradiction. It were more consistent to 
say, that neither the thinking individuals nor the material 
things, are anything self-subsistent, but only the one 
substance, — God. God only has real being ; whatever 
being attaches to finite things is unsubstantial, and they 
themselves are but accidents of the one true substance. 
Malebranche approaches this conclusion ; the corporeal 
world is at least for him ideally sublated into God, in 
whom are the eternal archetypes of all things. It is 
Spinoza, however, who, logically consequent, directly 
enunciates this conclusion of the accidentality of the finite 
and the exclusive substantiality of God. His system, 
then, is the truth and completion of that of Descartes. 



XXVI.— Spinoza. 

BARUCH SPESTOZA was born in Amsterdam on the 
24th of November 1632. His parents, Jews of 
Portuguese extraction, were well-to-do tradespeople, and 
gave him the education of a scholar. He studied with 
diligence the Bible and the Talmud. He soon ex- 
changed, however, the study of theology for that of 
physics and the works of Descartes. About the same 
time, having long broken inwardly with Judaism, he broke 
with it outwardly also, without, however, formally em- 
bracing Christianity. In order to escape the persecutions 
of the Jews, who had excommunicated him, and with 
whom his life was in danger, he left Amsterdam and be- 
took himself to Rhynsburg, near Leyden, but settled 
finally at the Hague, where, wholly absorbed in scienti- 
fic pursuits, he lived in the greatest seclusion. He earned 
his living by the polishing of optical glasses, which his 
friends disposed of. The Elector of the Palatinate, Carl 
Ludwig, made him an offer of a philosophical chair at 
Heidelberg, with the promise of complete liberty of 
opinion ; but Spinoza declined it. Delicate by nature, 
suffering from ill-health for years, Spinoza died of con- 
sumption on the 21st of February 1677, at the early age 
of forty-four. The cloudless purity and sublime tran- 
quillity of a perfectly wise man were mirrored in his life. 
Abstemious, satisfied with little, master of his passions, 
never immoderately sad or glad, gentle and benevolent, 
ot a character admirably pure, he faithfully followed the 



SPINOZA. 169 

doctrines of hi3 philosophy, even in his daily life. His 
eii~: work, :Lr Ei ".:■:, waa published the year he died 
He would have hked probably to have published it in his 
lifetime, but the hateful name of Atheist must have de- 
ed him. His most intimate friend, Ludwig Mayer, a 
physician, in accordance with his will, superintended the 
:ation after his death. 

The system oi Spinoza is supported on three fundamen- 
tal notions, from which all the others follow with mathe- 
matical necessity. These notions are those of substance, 
attribute, and mode. 

1 1, i Spinoza starts from the Cartesian definition of sub- 
stance : substance is that which, for it 3 existence, stands 
in need of nothing else. This notion of substance being 
assumed, there can exist, according to Spinoza, only a 
single substance. What is through its own self alone is 
necessarily infinite, unconditioned and unlimited by any- 
thing else. Spontaneous existence is the absolute power 
to exist, which cannot depend on anything else, or find 
in anything else a limit, a negation of itself ; only un- 
limited being is seli-subsistentj substantial being. A 
plurality of infinites, however,, ia impossible ; for one 
were indistinguishable from the other. A plurality of 
substances, as assumed by Descartes, is necessarily, there- 
fore, a contradiction. It is possible for only one sub- 
stance, and that an absolutely infinite substance, to exist. 
The given, finite reality necessarily presupposes such 
single, self-existent substance. It were a contradiction, 
that only the finite, not the infinite, should have exist- 
ence ; that there should be only what is conditioned and 
caused by something else, and not also what is self- 
existent and self-subsistent. The absolute substance is 
rather the real cause of all and every existence ; it alone 
is actual, unconditioned being ; it ia the sole virtue of 
existence, and through this virtue everything finite is : 
without it there ia nothing, with it there is all ; all reality 
reprehended in it, as, beside it, self-dependent being 
there is none ; it is not only cause of all being, but it is 
: all being ; every special existence is only a modifi- 
D individualization^ of the universal substance itself, 
ich, by force of inner necessity, expands its own in- 
finite reality into an immeasurable quantity of being, 
and comprises within itself every possible form of exist- 
ence. This one substance is named by Spinoza God. 
As ifl self-evident, then, we must leave out of view here 



170 HISTOR Y OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the Christian idea of God, the conception of an individual, 
spiritual personality. Spinoza expressly declares that he 
entertains quite a different idea of God from Christians ; 
he distinctly maintains that all existence, material exist- 
ence included, springs directly from God as the single 
substance ; and he laughs at those who see in the world 
aught but an accident of the divine substance itself. 
He recognises in the views of these a dualism which 
would annul the necessary unity of all things — a self- 
substantiation of the world, which would destroy the sole 
causality of God. The world is for him no product of 
the divine will that stands beside God, free : it is an 
emanation of the creative being of God, which being is, 
by its very nature, infinite. God, to Spinoza, is only 
the substance of things, and not anything else. The 
propositions, that there is only one God, and that the 
substance of all things is only one, are to him identical. 

What properly is substance now ? What is its positive 
nature ? We have here a question that from the position 
of Spinoza is very hard to answer. Partly for this reason, 
that a definition, according to Spinoza, must include the 
proximate cause (be genetic) of what is to be defined, 
whilst substance, as increate, can have no cause exter 
nal to itself. Partly, again, and chiefly for this reason, 
that to Spinoza, all determination is negation (omnis de 
terminatio est negatio, though only an incidental expres 
sion, is the fundamental idea of the entire system), for 
determination implies a defect of existence, a relative 
non-being. Special, positive designations, then, would 
only reduce substance to something finite. Declarations 
in its regard, consequently, must be only negative and 
provisory, as, for example, it has no external cause, is not 
a many, cannot possibly be divided, etc. Spinoza is re- 
luctant to say even that it is one, because this predicate 
may be easily taken as numerical, and then it might ap- 
pear as if another, the many, were opposed to it. Thus 
there are left only such positive expressions as enunciate 
its absolute relation to its own self. It is in this sense 
that Spinoza says of it, it is the cause of itself, or its 
nature implies existence. And it is only another ex- 
pression for the same thought when he calls substance 
eternal, for by eternity he understands existence itself, 
so far as it is conceived as following from the definition 
of the object, in the same sense in which geometricians 
speak of the eternal qualities of figures. Spinoza applies 



SPINOZA. 171 

to substance the predicate infinite also, so far as the notion 
of infinitude is identical to him with the notion of true 
being, with the absolute affirmation of existence. In the 
same manner the allegation, that God is free, expresses 
only what the others express, to wit, negatively, that all 
external force is excluded, and positively, that God is in 
agreement with himself, that his being corresponds to 
the laws of his nature. 

In sum, there is only one infinite substance, excludent 
of all determination and negation from itself, the one 
being in every being, — God. 

(&.) Besides infinite substance or God, Descartes had 
assumed two derivative and created substances, the one 
spirit or thought, the other matter or extension. These 
also re-appear here as the two ground-forms under which 
Spinoza subsumes all reality, — the two l attributes' in 
which the single substance reveals itself to us, so far as 
it is the cause of all that is. How now, — this is the per- 
plexing question, the Achilles' heel of the Spinozistic 
system, — are these attributes related to the infinite sub- 
stance ? Substance cannot wholly disappear in them ; else 
it were determinate, limited, and in contradiction, there- 
fore, to its own notion. If then these attributes do not ex- 
haust the objective being of substance, it follows that 
they are determinations in which substance takes form 
for the subjective apprehension of understanding ; or for 
behoof of understanding all is once for all divided into 
thought and extension. And this is the conception of 
Spinoza. An attribute is for him what understanding 
perceives in substance as constitutive of its nature. The 
two attributes are therefore determinations, which ex- 
press the nature of substance in these precise forms, only 
for perception. Substance itself being unexhausted by 
any such specialties of form, the attributes must be con- 
ceived as but expressions of its nature for an understand- 
ing that is placed apart from it. That such understanding 
should perceive substance only under these precise two 
forms is indifferent to substance itself, which impHciter 
possesses an infinitude of attributes. That is to say, all 
possible attributes, not limitations, may be assumed for 
substance. It is only the human understanding that in- 
vests substance with the two specially mentioned, and 
exclusively with these two, for of all the notions of the 
understanding, they are the only ones actually positive 
or expressive of reality. To the understanding, sub- 



172 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

stance is thought, then, considered tinder the attribute 
of thought, and extension, considered under the attribute 
of extension. In a word, the two attributes are but empi- 
rically derived determinations, that are incommensurate 
besides with the nature of substance. Substance stands 
behind them as the absolute infinite which cannot be com- 
prehended in any such special notions. The attributes 
explain not what substance really is ; and in its regard 
consequently appear contingent. Spinoza fails to supply 
any principle of union between the notion of absolute 
substance and the particular manner in which it mani- 
fests itself in the two attributes. 

In their own natural relation, the attributes, as with 
Descartes, are to be directly opposed to each other. 
They are attributes of one and the same substance, it is 
true, but each is independent in itself, as independent, 
indeed, as the very substance which it is supposed reali- 
ter to represent. Between thought and extension, then, 
spirit and matter, there can be no mutual influence; 
what is material can only have material causes, what is 
spiritual only spiritual ones, as ideas, volition, etc. 
Neither spirit, consequently, can act on matter, nor 
matter on spirit. Thus far, then, Spinoza adheres to the 
Cartesian severance of spirit and matter. But, as re- 
ferred to the notion of the single substance, both worlds 
are equally again one and the same ; there is a perfect 
agreement between them, a thorough parallelism. One 
and the same substance is thought as present in both at- 
tributes — one and the same substance in the various forms 
of existence under either. ' The idea of the circle and 
the actual circle are the same thing, now under the at- 
tribute of thought and again under that of extension.' 
From the one substance there proceeds, in effect, only 
a single infinite series of things, but a series of things in 
a variety of forms, even after subjection primarily to one 
or other of the forms of the attributes. The various 
things exist, like substance itself, as well under the ideal 
form of thought, as under the real form of extension. 
For every spiritual form there is a correspondent cor- 
poreal one, as for every corporeal form a correspondent 
spiritual one. Nature and spirit are different, indeed, 
but they are not isolatedly apart : they are everywhere 
together, like type and antitype, like things and the 
ideas of things, like object and subject, in which last the 
object mirrors itself, or what realiter is, idealiter reflects 



SPINOZA. 172 

itself. The world were not the product of a single sub- 
stance, if these two elements, thought and extension, 
were not, at every point in inseparable identity, united 
in it. Spinoza subjects, in particular, the relation between 
body and soul to the idea of this inseparable unity of 
spirit and matter, a unity which, according to him, per- 
vades the whole of nature, but in various grades of per- 
fection. And here we have his simple resolution of the 
problem, which, from the point of view of Descartes, was 
so difficult, and even inexplicable. In man, as every- 
where else, extension and thought (the latter, in his case, 
not only as feeling and perception, but as self-conscious 
reason) are together and inseparable. The soul is the 
consciousness that has for its objects the associated body, 
and through the intervention of the body, the remaining 
corporeal world, so far as it affects the body ; the body 
is the real organism whose states and affections con- 
sciously reflect themselves in the soul. But any influence 
of the one on the other does not for this very reason 
exist ; soul and body are the same thing, but expressed 
in the one case only as conscious thought, in the other 
as material extension. They differ only in form, so far 
as the nature and life of the body, so far, that is, as the 
various corporeal impressions, movements, functions, 
which obey wholly and solely the laws of the material 
organism, spontaneously coalesce in the soul to the unity 
of consciousness, conception, thought. 

(c.) The special individual forms which are ideas or 
material things, according as they are considered under 
the attribute of thought or under the attribute of exten- 
sion, receive their explanation at the hands of Spinoza by 
reference to the notion of accident, or, as he names it, 
modus. By modi we are to understand, then, the various 
individual finite forms, in which infinite substance particu- 
larizes itself. The modi are to substance what the waves 
are to the sea — shapes that perpetually die away, that 
never are. Nothing finite is possessed of a self-subsist- 
ent individuality. The finite individual exists, indeed, 
because the unlimited productive power of substance 
must give birth to an infinite variety of particular finite 
forms; but it has no proper reality, — it exists only in 
substance. Finite things are only the last, the most 
subordinate, the most external terms of existence, in 
which the universal life gives itself specific forms, and 
they bear the stamp of finitude in that they are sub* 



174 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

jected, without will, without resistance, to the causal 
chain that pervades this world. The divine substance is 
free only in the inner essence of its own nature, but in- 
dividual things are not free, they are a prey to all the 
others with which they are connected. This is their 
finitude, indeed, that they are conditioned and deter- 
mined, not by themselves, but by what is alien to them. 
They constitute the domain of pure necessity, within 
which each is free and independent only so far as power 
has been given it by nature to assert itself against the 
rest, and maintain intact its own existence and its pro- 
per and peculiar interests. 

These are the fundamental notions, the fundamental 
features of the system of Spinoza. As for his practical 
philosophy, it may be characterized in a few words. Its 
main propositions follow of necessity from the metaphysical 
principles which we have just seen. And for first example 
we have the inadmissibleness of what is called free-will. 
For, man being only modus, what is applicable to the 
others is applicable to him ; he is involved in the infinite 
series of conditional causes ; and free-will, therefore, can- 
not be predicated of him. His will, like every other bodily 
function, must be determined by something, whether an 
impression from without or an impulse from within. 
Men believe themselves free, simply because they are 
conscious of their own acts, but not of the motives of 
them. In the same way, the notions, which we usually 
connect with the words good and bad, rest on an error, 
as follows at once from the simple notion of the absolute 
divine cause. Good and bad are not anything actual in 
things themselves, but only express relative notions sug- 
gested to us by our own comparison of things one with 
another. We form for ourselves, namely, from the ob- 
servation of particular things, a certain general conception, 
and this conception we continue to regard as if it were a 
necessary rule for all other particular things. Should 
now some single individual clash with our general 
conception, that individual would be regarded as imper- 
fect, and as in disagreement with its own nature. Sin, 
then,thebad, is only relative, and not positive, for nothing 
happens contrary to the will of God. It is a mere nega- 
tion or privation, and appears something positive only 
to our finite minds. There is no bad to God. What, 
then, are good and bad? That is good which is useful 
to us, that bad which prevents us from attaining to the 



SPINOZA. 175 

good. That, again, is useful which procures us greater 
reality, which preserves and promotes our being. Our 
true being, however, is reason ; reason is the inner nature 
of our soul ; it is reason that makes us free ; for it is 
from reason that we possess the motive and the power to 
resist the molestations of things from without, to deter- 
mine our own action according to the law of the due pre- 
servation and promotion of our existence, and to place 
ourselves as regards all things in a relation adequate to 
our nature. What, consequently, contributes to our 
knowledge, that alone is useful. But the highest know- 
ledge is the knowledge of God. The highest virtue of the 
soul is to know and love God. Prom knowledge of God 
there arises for us the supreme happiness and joy, the 
bliss of the soul : it gives us peace in the thought of the 
eternal necessity of all things ; it delivers us from all dis- 
cord and discontent, from all fruitless struggling against 
the finitude of our own being ; it raises us from life in 
sense to that life in intellect, which, freed from all the 
troubles and the trials of the perishable, is occupied only 
with itself and with the eternal. Felicity, then, is not 
the reward of virtue, — it is virtue itself. 

What is true and great in the philosophy of Spinoza is, 
that everything individual, as finite, is merged by it in 
the gulf of substance. With regard immovably directed 
to the Eternal One, to God, it loses sight of all that to 
the common mind passes for real. But its defect is, that 
it fails truly to convert this negative gulf of substance 
into the terra firma of positive existence and actual life. 
It is with justice, then, that the substance of Spinoza has 
been compared to the den of the lion, where there are 
many steps to, but few from. The existence of the phe- 
nomenal world, the reality of the finite, if perishable, if 
null, is still not explained by Spinoza. We cannot see 
what this finite world of null appearance is here for ; 
any living connexion to God fails. The substance of 
Spinoza is exclusively a principle of identity ; it is not 
a principle of difference. Reflection, in its reference, 
proceeds from the finite to the absolute, but not also 
from the latter to the former ; it clasps together the 
many into a selfless unity in God ; it sacrifices all indi- 
vidual existence to the negative thought of unity, instead 
of enabling this unity, by a living evolution into concrete 
variety, to negate its own barren negativity. The sys- 
tem of Spinoza is the most abstract monotheism that can 



176 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

possibly be conceived. It is not by accident, then, that 
Spinoza, a Jew, has, in explanation of the universe, once 
more revived the idea of its absolute unity : such idea is, 
in some sort, a consequence of his nationality, an echo of 
the East. 



XXVII. — Idealism and Realism. 

WE stand now by a knot-point, a ganglion, a commis- 
sure, in the onward course of philosophy. Des- 
cartes had demonstrated the antithesis of thought and 
existence, of mind and matter, and had postulated a 
principle of resolution for it. This resolution succeeded 
ill with him, however, for he had placed the two sides of 
the antithesis in their greatest possible mutual isolation, 
he had assumed both as substances, as independent, 
mutually negating powers. The successors of Descartes 
sought a more satisfactory solution ; but the theories to 
which they found themselves compelled, only showed the 
more plainly the untenableness of the entire presupposi- 
tion. Spinoza, finally, abandoned the false presupposi- 
tion, and stripped each of the opposing sides of its inde- 
pendent substantiality. In the infinite substance, spirit 
and matter, thought and extension, are now one. But 
they are not one in themselves ; and only as one in them- 
selves were there a true unity of both. That they are in 
substance one avails them little, for to substance itself 
they are indifferent, that is, they are not immanent 
differences of substance. With Spinoza, too, then, they 
are absolutely separated from one another. The reason 
of this isolation is simply that Spinoza has not suffi- 
ciently disembarrassed himself of the presuppositions and 
dualism of Descartes, — he, too, looks on thought as only 
thought, on extension as only extension, and this con- 
ception of them necessarily excludes the one from the 
other. If an inner principle of union is to be found for 
them, this abstraction of each must be broken up and 
removed. In the opposed sides themselves must the re- 
conciliation be accomplished. There are, consequently, 
two ways possible, either from the position of the 
material side, to explain the ideal, or from that of the 
ideal side to explain the material. And in effect both 
ways were almost simultaneously attempted. From this 
point begins each of the two series of views which have 



LOCKE. 177 

divided the intellectual world since, that, namely, of 
Idealism one-sidedly on the one hand, and that of 
Realism (empiricism, sensualism, materialism), equally 
one-sidedly on the other. 



XXVIII.— Locke. 

THE originator of the realistic series, the father ck. 
modern materialism and empiricism, was the Eng- 
lish John Locke. He possessed a precursor, indeed, in 
his countryman, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) ; whom, 
however, we merely mention in this place, as his in- 
fluence concerned rather the history of political science. 

John Locke was born at Wrington in 1632. His early 
studies were directed to philosophy, and, in particular, to 
medicine. His delicate health, however, precluded the 
practice of the latter ; and, little interrupted by any claims 
of business, he lived a life of merely literary activity. Not 
without considerable influence on his life and circum- 
stances was his connexion with the celebrated statesman 
Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, in whose 
house he was always welcome, and where he enjoyed 
intercourse with the most distinguished men in England. 
In the year 1670, at the instigation of some of his friends, 
he sketched the first plan of his celebrated Essay concern- 
ing Human Understanding. The complete work, however, 
was published only in 1690. Locke died in 1704, at the 
age of seventy-two. Precision and clearness, perspicuity 
and distinctness, are the characteristics of his writings. 
Acute rather than deep in his thinking, he is true to the 
character of his nationality. The fundamental thoughts 
and chief results of his system are now elements of popu- 
lar or general information everywhere, especially in Eng- 
land ; but we are not to forget on that account that he was 
the first to give scientific position to that standard of intel- 
ligence, and that he occupies, therefore, however much his 
principle may fail in any internal capability of develop- 
ment, a legitimate place in the history of philosophy. 

Locke's philosophy (that is, his theory of knowledge, 
for that is the scope of his entire inquiry) rests on two 
thoughts, the subjects of constant repetition : first (nega- 
tively), that there are no innate ideas ; and second (posi- 
tively), that all our knowledge springs from experience. 

Many are of opinion, says Locke, that there are innate 

M 



178 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ideas, received into the soul at birth, and brought with it 
into the world. In proof of these ideas, they appeal to 
the universal existence of them in every human being, 
without exception. But, even granting this to be the 
fact, it would prove nothing, if the universality of the 
agreement could be explained otherwise. But the al- 
leged fact is not fact. Principles, universally admitted, 
there are none such, — whether in the theoretical or in 
the practical world. Not in the practical world, — for 
the spectacle of the various nations, and at the various 
periods of their history, teaches us that there is no moral 
rule observable by all. Not in the theoretical world, — 
for even the propositions which have the greatest preten- 
sions to universal validity, as ' What is, is,' or, ' It is im- 
possible for the same thing to be and not to be,' are not 
by any means universally admitted. Children and idiots 
have no conception of these principles, and neither do 
the uneducated know anything about such abstract pro- 
positions ; how, then, can they be implanted in them by 
nature ? Were ideas innate, we should all, of necessity, 
be aware of them even from our earliest childhood. For 
'to be in the mind ' is the same thing as ' to be known.' 
The reply that these ideas are implanted in the mind, 
only it is unconscious of them, is therefore a mani- 
fest contradiction. As little is gained by the plea, that, 
so soon as men make use of their reason, they become 
conscious of these principles. This allegation is simply 
false, because said axioms come much later into conscious- 
ness than many other particulars of knowledge, and chil- 
dren, for example, give numerous proofs of their exercise of 
reason before they know that a thing cannot possibly be, 
and not be. It is certainly correct to say that nobody 
attains to a consciousness of the principles in question 
without reason ; but it is untrue that, with the first act 
of reason, they become present to consciousness. The 
first facts of knowledge, rather, are not general principles, 
but particular instances (impressions). The child knows 
that sweet is not bitter, long before it understands the 
logical proposition of contradiction. Whoever atten- 
tively reflects, will hardly maintain that the particular 
propositions, 'sweet is not bitter,' for instance, — flow 
from the general Ones. Were these latter innate, they 
ought to constitute for the child, the first elements of 
consciousness, for what nature has implanted in the soul 
must plainly be earlier present to consciousness, than 



LOCKE. 179 

what she has not implanted. The existence of innate 
ideas, consequently, whether theoretical or practical, is an 
assumption as much to be rejected as that of an innate 
existence of arts and sciences. The understanding (or 
the soul) is in itself a tabula rasa, a void surface, a blank 
page on which nothing has been written. 

How, then, does the mind acquire its ideas ? They are 
due to experience, on which all knowledge is founded, — 
on which, indeed, as its principle, all knowledge depends. 
Experience, however, is in itself twofold : it is either the 
perception of the external objects through the special 
senses, in which case it is named sensation ; or it is the 
perception of the internal operations of the soul, in which 
case it is named the internal sense, or, better, reflection. 
Sensation and reflection furnish the understanding with 
all its ideas. These faculties are to be regarded as the 
single window by which the light of the ideas falls into 
the camera obscura of the mind. The external objects 
supply the ideas of sensible qualities ; the internal object 
again, the life of the soul, supplies the ideas of its own 
operations. The problem of the philosophy of Locke, 
then, is to derive and explain the ideas generally, by a 
reference to these two sources. They are divided, in the 
first place, into the simple and the complex. Simple ideas 
are such as the mind receives from elsewhere, in the same 
manner as a mirror receives the images of the objects 
presented to it. They are partly such as reach the mind 
through a single sense, as ideas of colour through sight, 
of sound through hearing, and of solidity, or impenetra- 
bility, through touch ; partly such as are contributed by 
several senses, as the ideas, for instance, of extension and 
motion, which are due to the senses of touch and sight 
combined ; partly such as are derived from reflection, as 
the ideas of thought, and of will ; partly such, finally, as 
spring from sensation and reflection together, as the 
ideas, for example, of power, unity, succession, etc. 
These simple ideas constitute the materials, as it were 
the letters, of all our knowledge. As language now, by 
means of various combinations of the single letters, forms 
syllables and words, so the mind, by means of various 
combinations of the simple ideas, forms the compound or 
complex ideas. These may be reduced to three classes, 
to ideas, namely, of modes, of substances, and of relations. 
The ideas of the first class consist of the modifications of 
space (distance, linear measure, immensity, surface, figure, 



180 HISTOBY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

etc.), of time (duration, eternity), of thought (perception, 
memory, abstraction), of number, and so on. In parti- 
cular, Locke subjects to a strict examination the notion of 
substance. He explains its origin in this way : we learn 
as well from sensation as reflection, that a certain num- 
ber of simple ideas frequently present themselves to- 
gether. Being unable to think, now, these simple ideas 
as self -supported, we accustom ourselves to conceive a 
self-subsistent substrate as their basis, and to this sub- 
strate we give the name of substance. Substance is the 
unknown something which is thought as the vehicle of 
such qualities as produce in us the simple ideas. It follows 
not, however, that substance, though product of our own 
subjective thought, does not at the same time exist with- 
out us. It is rather distinguished from all the other com- 
plex ideas, by the fact that it does possess an objectively 
real archetype without us ; while these, spontaneously 
formed by the mind, are devoid of any correspondent 
reality. What the archetype of substance is, we know 
not ; we only know the attributes of substances. From 
the notion of substance Locke passes, in the last place, to 
that of relation. A relation takes place whenever the 
mind so unites two things that on observation of the one 
it immediately reverts to the other. All things are cap- 
able of being placed in relation by the understanding, or, 
what is the same thing, of being converted into relatives. 
It is thus impossible completely to enumerate relations. 
Locke considers, therefore, only a few of the more impor- 
tant relations, that of identity and difference among 
others, but above all, cause aud effect. The idea of this 
relation arises on our perception of how something, 
whether a substance or a quality, begins to exist in con- 
sequence of the action of another something. Thus far 
the ideas ; to the combinations of which, further, we owe 
the conception of knowledge in general. Knowledge, in- 
deed, is related to the simple and complex ideas as a pro- 
position to its component letters, syllables, and words. 
It follows from this that our knowledge extends not beyond 
the range of our ideas, and, consequently, of experience. 

These are the principal thoughts of Locke's philosophy ; 
and its empiricism is obvious in them. The mind to it 
is in itself void, a mere mirror of the external world, a 
dark room into which the images of the things without 
fall, without any contribution or action on its part ; its 
entire contents are due to the impressions made on it by 



HUME. 181 

material things. Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit 
in sensu, is the watchword of the position. And if 
Locke undoubtedly pronounces in these propositions the 
precedence of matter to mind, he makes the same opinion 
still more manifest when he thinks it possible, nay, pro- 
bable, that the soul is a material substance. The converse 
possibility, that material are subordinate to spiritual 
things as but a species of the latter, is not entertained by 
Locke. The soul to him, then, is but secondary to mat- 
ter, and he takes his place on that position of realism 
which has been already characterized (xxvn.). Locke, it 
is true, has, in the prosecution of his views, not always 
remained consistent to his principles. Empiricism in his 
hands is not, in several respects, a perfect structure. 
We can see already, however, that the subsequent course 
of this mode of thinking will incline towards a complete 
denial of the ideal factor. 

The empiricism of Locke, so well adapted as it is to the 
character of his nation, soon became, in England, the 
dominant philosophy. As occupying the general position, 
we may name Isaac Newton, the great mathematician 
(1642-1727), Samuel Clarke, a disciple of Newton's, prin- 
cipally interested in moral philosophy (1675-1729) ; 
further, the English moralists of this period, William 
Wollaston (1659-1724), the Earl of Shaftesbury (1671- 
1713), Francis Hutcheson (1695-1747); and even oppo- 
nents of Locke, as Peter Brown (d. 1735). 



XXIX.— Hume. 

LOCKE, as just remarked, was neither consistent nor 
successful in the completion and realization of em- 
piricism. Although assigning material things a decided 
superiority to the thinking subject, he made thought, in 
one respect (in the notion of substance), the prescribing 
power of the objective world. Of all the complex ideas 
constructed by subjective thought, one alone, substan- 
tiality, possesses for Locke an exceptional character of 
objective reality ; whilst the others, purely subjective, 
are devoid of any correspondent objectivity. Subjective 
thought does not only introduce a notion of its own for- 
mation, substance, into the objective world, but it asserts, 
as correspondent to this notion, an objective relation, an 
objective connexion of things themselves, an existent 



182 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

rationality. In this reference, subjective reason stands, 
in a certain sort, as dominant over the objective world ; 
for the relation of substantiality is not immediately de- 
rived from the world of sense, — it is no product of sen- 
sation and perception. On a position purely empirical 
— and such is the position Locke himself assumes — it 
was an inconsistency to allow substantiality an objective 
validity. If the mind is in itself a dark empty room, a 
blank sheet of paper ; if its entire provision of objective 
knowledge consists merely of the impressions made on it 
by material things ; then the notion of substantiality must 
be also declared a merely subjective conception, an arbi- 
trary conjunction of ideas ; and the subject must be com- 
pletely emptied and deprived of the last support on which 
to found any claim of superiority to the world of matter. 
This step in the direction of a self-consistent empiricism 
was, in his critique of Causality, taken by Hume. 

David Hume was born at Edinburgh in 1711. En- 
gaged in his youth in the study of law, and then in mer- 
cantile pursuits, he devoted himself, at a later period, 
exclusively to history and philosophy. His first literary 
attempt attracted scarcely any attention. His Essays, — 
of which there eventually appeared, from 1742 to 1757, 
five volumes, — experienced a more favourable reception. 
Hume has discussed in these a variety of philosophical 
subjects ; in the manner of a thoughtful, cultivated, and 
polished man of the world ; to the consequent neglect of 
any rigorous systematic connexion. After his appoint- 
ment as librarian, at Edinburgh, in the year 1752, he 
commenced his celebrated History of England. He was 
afterwards Secretary of Legation at Paris, where he made 
the acquaintance of Rousseau; and in 1767 he became 
Under-Secretary of State, an office, however, which he 
held only for a short time. His latter years were spent at 
Edinburgh, in the enjoyment of a tranquil and contented 
retirement. He died in 1776. 

The middle-point of the philosophizing of Hume is his 
critique of the notion of causality. Locke had already 
expressed the thought that we owe the notion of sub- 
stance to the custom of always seeing certain modes to- 
gether. This thought was taken up seriously by Hume. 
How do we know, he asks, that two things stand to each 
other in the relation of causality ? We know it neither a 
priori, nor from experience : for knowledge a 'priori extend- 
ing only to what is identical, and the effect being different 



HUME. 183 

from the cause, the former cannot be discovered in the lat- 
ter ; and experience, again, exhibits to us only a sequence 
of two events in time. All our reasonings from experi- 
ence, therefore, are founded solely on custom. Because 
we are accustomed to see that one thing follows another 
in time, we conceive the idea that it must follow, and 
from it ; of a relation of succession we make a relation 
of causality. Connexion in time is naturally something 
different, however, from connexion in causality. In this 
notioD we exceed experience, then, and proceed to the 
creation of ideas for which in strictness we have no autho- 
rity. What holds good of causality holds good also of 
all the other relations of necessity. We find we do pos- 
sess other such notions, as, for example, that of power and 
its realization. Let us ask how we obtain this idea, or the 
idea of necessary connexion in general Not possibly 
through sensation, for external objects may show us indeed 
simultaneous co-existence, but not necessary connexion. 
Perhaps, then, through reflection ? It certainly seems, as 
if we might get the idea of power from observing that the 
organs of the body obey the volitions of the mind. But 
since neither the means by which the mind acts on the 
body are known to us, nor all the organs of the body yield 
obedience to the mind, it follows that, even as regards a 
knowledge of these operations, it is to experience that we 
are driven ; and as experience again is, for its part, able 
to exhibit only frequent co-existence, but no real con- 
nexion, it results that we obtain the notion of power, as 
that of all necessary connexion in general, only from being 
accustomed to certain transitions on the part of our ideas. 
All notions expressive of a relation of necessity, all sup- 
posed cognitions of an objective connexion in things, rest 
at last, consequently, only on the association of ideas. 
From the denial of the notion of substantiality there fol- 
lowed for Hume the denial of that also of the ego itself. 
Self, or the ego, did it really exist, would be substantial, 
a persistent vehicle of inherent qualities. But as our 
notion of substance is something merely subjective, with- 
out any objective reality, it results that there is no cor- 
respondent reality for our notion of the ego either. The 
self or ego is nothing else, in fact, than a complex of 
numerous swiftly succeeding ideas, under which complex 
we then suppose placed an imaginary substrate, named 
by us soul, self, or ego. The self or ego, therefore, 
rests wholly on an illusion. In the case of such pre- 



184 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

suppositions, there cannot be any talk naturally of the 
immortality of the soul. The soul being only a complex 
of our ideas, necessarily ceases with these, and conse- 
quently, therefore, with the movements of the body. 

After these propositions, which represent the principal 
thoughts of Hume, there is no call for any further argu- 
mentation to prove that Hume's scepticism was but a 
more consistent following out of Locke's empiricism. If 
we owe all our knowledge to perception of sense, then all 
determinations of universality and necessity must, in 
logical result, disappear ; for they are not contained in 
sensation. 



XXX.— Condillac. 

TO carry out the empiricism of Locke into its ultimate 
consequence, into sensualism and materialism, — this 
is the task which has been assumed by the French. Though 
grown on a soil of English principles, and very soon uni- 
versally prevalent there, empiricism could not possibly 
be developed amongst the English into the extreme form 
which presently declared itself among the French, — that 
is, into the complete destruction of all the foundations of 
the moral and religious life. This last consequence was 
not congenial to the national character of the English. 
On the contrary, as early as the second half of the eigh- 
teenth century, there appeared, in opposition not only to 
the scepticism of Hume, but even to the empiricism of 
Locke, that reaction which is named Scottish Philosophy 
(Reid, 1704-1796, Beattie, Oswald, Dugald Stewart, 1753- 
1828). The aim of this philosophy was to establish, in 
contradistinction to the Lockian tabula rasa and the 
Humian despair of any necessity of reason, certain prin- 
ciples of truth innate or immanent in the subject; and 
this (in a genuinely English manner), as facts of experi- 
ence, as facts of the moral instinct and healthy human 
understanding (common sense) ; as an element empirically 
so given, and discoverable by means of observation of 
ourselves, and reflection on our ordinary consciousness. 
In France, on the other hand, political and social circum- 
stances had so shaped themselves in the course of the 
eighteenth century, that we can recognise writings which 
drew relentlessly the ultimate practical consequences of 
the position, — systems, namely, of a materialistic theory 



CONDI LL AC. 185 

of the world and of a deliberately reasoned egoistic mo- 
rality, — only as natural results of the universal corruption. 
The declaration of a great lady in regard to the system 
of Helvetius, that it only spoke out the secret of every- 
body, is, in this connexion, familiarly known. 

The sensualism of the Abbe" de Condillac stands closest 
to the empiricism of Locke. Condillac was born at Gre- 
noble in 1715. In his earliest writings an adherent of 
the theory of Locke, he subsequently went further, and 
endeavoured to make good a philosophical position of his 
own. Made member of the French Academy in 1768, he 
died in 1780. His collected writings, which bespeak 
moral earnestness and religious feeling, compose twenty- 
three volumes. 

Condillac, in agreement with Locke, began from the 
proposition, that all our knowledge springs from expe- 
rience. Whilst Locke, however, assumed two sources of 
this empirical knowledge, sensation and reflection, or ex- 
ternal and internal sense, Condillac contended for the 
reduction of both to one, of reflection to sensation. Re- 
flection is for him equally sensation ; all mental processes, 
even will and the combination of the ideas, are in his eyes 
only modified sensations. The realization of this concep- 
tion, the derivation of the various mental faculties from 
external sense, — this constitutes the main interest and the 
main matter of Condillac's philosophy. He endeavours 
to demonstrate his leading idea by reference to an ima- 
ginary statue, in which, — organized internally indeed like 
a human being, but destitute at first of any ideas, — one 
sense after another is conceived gradually to awake and 
to fill the soul with the various impressions. Man as in- 
debted for all his knowledge and for all his motives to 
external sensation, appears, in this mode of viewing 
him, quite on the footing of one of the lower animals. 
In consistency, therefore, Condillac calls men perfect ani- 
mals, and the other animals imperfect men. He still 
shrinks, however, from denial of the existence of God, 
and equally from assertion of the materiality of the soul. 
These, the ultimate consequences of sensualism, were 
taken by others after him ; and they lie sufficiently on 
the surface. For if sensualism maintains, that truth, or 
what really is, can only be perceived by the senses, we 
need but take this proposition objectively to have the 
thesis of materialism : only what is sensuous is, there is 
no being but material being. 



186 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



XXXL—Helvetius. 

THE moral consequences of the sensualistic position 
were drawn by Helvetius. Let theoretic sensual- 
ism declare, that all our knowledge is determined by 
external sensation, then practical sensualism adds the ana- 
logous proposition, that all our volition as well is deter- 
mined by external sensation, by the requirements of sense. 
The satisfaction of our sensuous desires was set up by 
Helvetius accordingly as the principle of morals. 

Helvetius was born at Paris in 1715. Appointed in his 
twenty-third year to the post of a Farmer-General, he 
found himself, at an early period of life, in possession of 
an opulent income. Nevertheless, after a few years, he 
resigned his place in consequence of the many unpleasant 
complications in which it involved him. The study of 
the writings of Locke decided his philosophical creed. 
Helvetius wrote his famous book De V Esprit in the rural 
retirement that followed the resignation of his post. It 
appeared in 1758, and excited, both at home and abroad, 
great, and often favourable attention, but brought him 
also much bitter persecution, especially from the priests. 
Helvetius must have thought it fortunate, however, that 
they were satisfied with attempting to crush the book. 
The rural tranquillity in which he passed the later years 
of his life was only interrupted twice : once by a jour- 
ney to Germany, and again by a voyage to England. He 
died in 1771. His personal character was estimable, full 
of good-nature and love to his fellows. In his post of 
Farmer-General, he was benevolent to the poor, and 
sternly opposed to the exactions of his subordinates. His 
works are written with perspicuity and elegance. 

Self-love, interest, says Helvetius. is the lever of all 
our actions. Even our purely intellectual activities, our 
desire of knowledge, our traffic in ideas, spring from the 
love of self. But all self-love tends in the end only to 
bodily enjoyment. All our actions, therefore, mental and 
other, have no source or spur but the gratification of 
sense. And in this there is already indicated where the 
principle of morality is to be sought. It is absurd to 
expect men to do the good for the sake of the good. This 
is as little in their power as to will the bad for the sake 
of the bad. If, then, morality is not to remain com- 
pletely fruitless, it must return to its empirical source. 



THE FRENCH ILLUMINATION 187 

and dare to proclaim as its principle the true principle of 
all action, animal feeling, pleasure and pain, self-interest. 
As therefore true legislation procures obedience to the 
laws by the stimulus of punishment and reward, by self- 
interest ; so that only is the true moral principle which, 
regarding the duties of mankind as results of self-love, 
demonstrates the general nature of what is forbidden us 
to be the producing of disgust, etc., in short, of pain. 
If morality bring not men's interest into play, — if it re- 
sist them, — then plainly it will be necessarily fruitless. 



XXXII. — French Illumination and Materialism. 

IT has been already remarked (xxx.), that the pushing 
of empiricism to an extreme, as realized in France, 
has a very close connexion with the general social and 
political condition of the French people at the time that 
precedes the Revolution. The struggle characteristic of 
the middle ages, the external, dualistic relation to the 
church, was continued in Catholic France to the confusion 
and corruption of all the interests of life. Men's minds 
were demoralized everywhere, especially under the influ- 
ence of a dissolute court ; the state was become an unre- 
strained despotism ; the church had sunk into an equally 
hypocritical and tyrannical hierarchy. All substance and 
worth, then, having disappeared from the spiritual world, 
there was left nothing but nature ; in the form, too, of 
an un spiritualized mass, of matter ; and an object for 
man only as it was subservient to his sensuous greeds 
and needs. It is, however, not specially the extreme of 
materialism that constitutes the characteristic of the 
French illumination. The common character of the 
so-called Philosophes of the eighteenth century in France, 
is rather their tendency to oppose all the tyranny and 
corruption that were then prevalent in morals, reli- 
gion, and the state. They directed their polished and 
sparkling, rather than strictly scientific critical polemic, 
against the entire world of received opinions, of the tra- 
ditional, the given, the positive. They endeavoured to 
demonstrate the contradiction in which all that was estab- 
lished in church and state stood to the irrefutable de- 
mands of reason. What was received and unquestioned, 
this— if unable to justify its existence in the sight of 
reason — they strove to shake in the belief of the world 



188 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

at the same time that they vindicated for man, rational 
man, the full consciousness of his native freedom. Truly 
to appreciate the immeasurable merit of these men, we 
must realize to ourselves the condition of things against 
which their attacks were directed : the licentiousness of 
a miserable court that demanded slavish obedience ; the 
tyranny and hypocrisy of a priesthood rotten to the core, 
that insisted on blind submission ; the degradation of a 
disintegrated church that exacted veneration — in short, 
an administration of the state, a dispensation of justice, 
a condition of society that must revolt to the utmost 
every intellectual principle, and every moral feeling of 
man. To have exposed to hatred and contempt the 
baseness and worthlessness of existing interests, sum- 
moned the minds of men to indifference for the idols of 
the world, and awakened them to a consciousness of their 
autonomy — this, of these men, is the imperishable glory. 

2. The most brilliant and influential spokesman of this 
period is Voltaire (1694-1778). Not a professed philo- 
sopher, but an infinitely versatile writer, and an unsur- 
passed master of expression, he .acted more powerfully 
than any of the philosophers of the time on the whole 
mode of thought of his age and nation. Voltaire was 
not an atheist. On the contrary, he considered belief 
in a Supreme Being so absolutely essential that he 
said, if there were no God, it would be necessary to 
invent one. As little did he deny the immortality of 
the soul, though he frequently expressed doubts of it. 
The atheistic materialism of a La Mettrie he looked upon 
as mere stupidity. In these respects, then, he is far from 
occupying the position of his philosophical successors. 
On the other hand his heart's hatred is to the positive of 
religion, — the simply dictated. He regarded the destruc- 
tion of hierarchical intolerance as his special mission, and 
he left no stone unturned in order to accomplish this pas- 
sionately cherished end. His indefatigable struggle 
against all positive religion, by advancing information 
generally, however, essentially prepared the way for the 
later opponents of spiritualism. 

3. Markedly more sceptical is the relation of the 
Encyclopedists to the principles and presuppositions of 
spiritualism. The philosophical Encyclopaedia originated 
by Diderot (1713-1784), and edited by him in conjunction 
with D'Alembert, is a remarkable monument of the 
spirit which prevailed in France in the generation before 



THE FRENCH ILL UMINA TIOW. 1 89 

the Revolution. It was the pride of France at that time, 
because it spoke out, in a brilliant, universally accessible 
form, its own inmost convictions. With the keenest wit, it 
reasoned out of the state law, out of morality free-will, out 
of nature God, and all this only in interrupted, and for the 
most part half -apprehensive hints. In the other writings of 
Diderot we find considerable philosophical talent combined 
with a certain depth of earnestness. Still his philosophi- 
cal views cannot be easily assigned or accurately deter- 
mined ; for both they themselves were of very gradual 
growth, and Diderot trusted himself to express them not 
without accommodation and reserve. On the whole, how- 
ever, his mode of thought approached, in the course of its 
development, nearer and nearer to the extreme of the 
prevailing philosophical tendency. A deist in his earlier 
writings, the drift of those subsequently produced amounts 
to the belief that all is God. At first a defender of the 
immateriality and immortality of the soul, he perempto- 
rily declares at last, that only the genus endures, that in- 
dividuals pass, and that immortality is nothing but life 
in the remembrance of posterity. The consequent extreme 
of materialism, Diderot, however, refused to accept : 
from that he was rescued by his moral earnestness. 

4. The last word of materialism, nevertheless, was, with 
unhesitating hardihood, spoken out by Diderot's contem- 
porary, the physician LaMettrie (1709-1751). Anything 
spiritual, namely, is now a delusion, and physical enjoy- 
ment is the chief end of man. As for belief in a God in 
the first place, La Mettrie pronounces it equally ground- 
less and profitless. The world will never be happy till 
Atheism is universal. Only then shall we have no more 
religious wars ; only then will those f earfulest of fighting 
men, the theologians, disappear, and leave the world they 
have poisoned to return to itself. As for the soul, there 
can be no philosophy but materialism. All the observa- 
tions and experiments of the greatest physicians and philo- 
sophers pronounce for this. Soul is nothing but an 
empty name, which gets sense only when understood as 
that part of the body that thinks. This is the brain, 
which has its fibres of cogitation, as the legs have their 
muscles of motion. That man has the advantage of the 
lower animals, is owing, firstly, to the organization of his 
brain, and, secondly, to the education it receives. Man, 
otherwise, is an animal like the rest, — in many respects 
inferior to them. Immortality is an absurdity. The 



190 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

soul, as a part of the body, goes with the body. At 
death all is 'up,' la farce estjouee! Moral : let us enjoy 
while we can, and never throw a chance away. 

5. What La Mettrie threw out with levity and a grin, 
the Syst&me de la Nature, as the representative book of 
philosophical materialism, endeavoured to establish with 
the seriousness and precision of science, — the doctrine, 
namely, that nothing exists but matter, and mind is either 
naught, or only a finer matter. 

The Systeme de la Nature appeared pseudonymously in 
London, in the year 1770, under the name of the deceased 
Mirabaud, secretary of the Academy. Without doubt it 
originated in the circle of beaux esprits who frequented 
the table of Baron Holbach, and took its tone from Dide- 
rot, Grimm, and others. Whether it was Holbach him- 
self, or his domestic tutor Lagrange, or several together, 
who wrote the work, it is impossible now to decide. The 
book is not a French book : the writing is tame and 
tedious. 

There is nowhere anything, says the Systeme de la 
Nature, but matter and motion. Both are inseparably 
combined. When matter is at rest, it is at rest only as 
prevented from moving ; it is not itself a dead mass. 
There are two sorts of motion, attraction and repulsion. 
From these two we have the various other motions, and 
from these, again, the various combinations, and so, con- 
sequently, the entire multiplicity, of things. The laws 
according to which these actions take place are eternal 
and immutable. The most important results are these : — 
(a.) The materiality of man : man is no equivoque, as is 
erroneously supposed, of mind and matter. If we ask, for 
instance, what then is this thing that is called mind, the 
usual answer is, that the most accurate philosophical in- 
vestigations demonstrate the motive principle in man to 
be a substance which, in its essence, is incomprehensible 
indeed, but which is known, for all that, to be indivis- 
ible, unextended, invisible, etc. But how are we to find 
anything definite or conceivable in a being that is but a 
negation of all that constitutes knowledge — a being, the 
very idea of which is but the absence of all idea what- 
ever ? Moreover, how is it explicable, on the supposition 
in view, that a being, not material, itself, can act on, and 
give movement to, beings which are material, although 
plainly there can exist no point of contact between them ? 
The truth is, that those who distinguish their soul from 



THE FRENCH ILL UMINA TION. 191 

their body, only distinguish their brain from their 
body. Thought is only a modification of the brain, 
as will is but another modification of the same corporeal 
organ, (b.) On a par with this duplication of himself 
into soul and body, there is in man another chimera — 
belief in the existence of a God. This belief has its origin, 
like the assumption of a soul, in a false distinction of mind 
from matter, in an unwarrantable doubling of nature. 
Man referred the evils he experienced, and of which he 
was unable to detect the natural causes, to a God, a God 
which he had fabled for himself. Fear, suffering, igno- 
rance, — these, then, are the sources of our first ideas of a 
God. We tremble, because our forefathers, thousands of 
years ago, trembled before us. This is not a circumstance 
to create any favourable pre-judgment. But it is not 
only the cruder conception of God that is worthless, the 
more elaborate theological theory is equally so, for it ex- 
plains not one single phenomenon of nature. It is full, 
too, of absurdities, for in ascribing moral attributes to 
God, it humanizes him, and yet, by means of a mass of 
negative attributes, it would, at the very same moment, 
distinguish him, and in the most absolute manner, from 
all other beings. The true system, the system of nature, 
is consequently Atheism. Such a creed requires, on the 
one side, education, and, on the other, courage ; for it is 
not the possession as yet of all, nor even of many. If 
by atheist there is understood a man who believes only 
in dead matter, or if by God, the moving power in nature, 
then, certainly, a single Atheist cannot possibly exist, 
unless he were a fool. But if by Atheist is understood 
one that denies the existence of an immaterial being, of 
a being whose imaginary qualities can only disturb man- 
kind, then, in that sense, there are Atheists, and there 
would be still more of them, were a sound understand- 
ing general, and did a true idea of nature more com- 
monly obtain. But Atheism being truth, it must be 
spread. There are many, it is true, who having rescued 
themselves from the yoke of religion, still believe in its 
necessity for the herd, in order to keep it in bounds. 
But this is nothing else than to poison a man to prevent 
him from abusing his gifts. Any deism is necessarily 
but a direct step to superstition, for pure deism is a 
position not possibly tenable, (c.) With such presupposi- 
tions there can be no talk of the immortality and free- 
will of man. Man is not different from the other things 



192 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of nature. Like them, lie is a link in the indissoluble 
chain, a blind tool in thp hands of necessity. Did any- 
thing possess the ability to move itself, that is, to produce 
a motion not referable to any other cause, it would have 
power to bring to a stop the motion of the universe ; but 
that is impossible, for the universe is an infinite series of ne- 
cessary motions, which continue and propagate themselves 
to all eternity. The assumption of individual immortality 
is a nonsensical hypothesis. For to maintain that the soul 
endures after the destruction of the body, is to maintain 
that a function may remain when its organ has disap- 
peared. Other immortality there is none than that of 
fame in the future, (d.) The results, practically, of the 
theory, afford a powerful support to the system of nature ; 
and the utility of a theory is always the best criterion of 
its truth. Whilst the ideas of theologians can only dis- 
quiet and torment man, the system of nature relieves him 
from all such anxieties, teaches him to enjoy the present, 
and furnishes him with that apathy for the compliant 
bearing of his lot, which everybody must esteem a happi- 
ness. Morality, to be practical, must be founded on self- 
love, on interest ; it must be able to show the individual 
in what his well-understood advantage lies. That man 
who follows his own interest so that other men for their 
interest must contribute to his, is a good man. A system 
of self-interest, then, promotes the union of mankind 
mutually, and consequently also true morality. 

This consistent dogmatic materialism of the Syst&me de 
la Nature is the utmost extreme of the empirical ten- 
dency, and closes, consequently, the systems of abstract 
realism that began with Locke. The derivation and ex- 
planation of the ideal from and by the material world, 
initiated by Locke, have terminated in materialism, in 
the reduction of the spiritual to the material principle, 
in the denial of spirit generally. We have now, before 
going further to consider, as already intimated (xxvn.), 
the other or idealistic series which runs parallel with 
the realistic one. And at its head is Leibnitz. 



XXXIIL— Leibnitz. 

IF empiricism was animated by a desire to subordinate 
mind to matter, to materialize mind, idealism will 
seek, on the contrary, to spiritualize matter, or so to con- 



LEIBNITZ. 193 

strue the idea of spirit, that matter shall be subsumed 
under it. If to the former, spirit was nothing but a 
finer matter, matter to the latter will prove itself, con- 
versely, only crassified spirit (or, as Leibnitz expresses 
it, only ' confused ideation '). The one, indeed, was, in 
logical consistency, driven to the proposition, There are 
only material things ; the other, again (in Leibnitz and 
Berkeley), will take stand by the opposed result, There 
are only spirits (souls), and the thoughts of spirits (ideas). 
For the one-sided realistic stand-point, material things 
were the veritable substantial element ; while, contrari- 
wise, for the correspondent realistic stand-point, this 
element will be only spiritual beings, egos. Spirit 
was to one-sided realism in itself empty, a tabula rasa, 
dependent on the external world for its entire provision. 
One-sided idealism, on the contrary, will strive to the 
proposition, That nothing can come into the soul, that is 
not at least preformed within it, That all its knowledge 
must be derivative from itself. To the former mode of 
view, knowledge was a passive relation ; to the latter, it 
will appear an active one. Lastly, if abstract realism pre- 
fer to explain the becoming and eventuality of nature 
by real grounds, or mechanically (UHomme Machine 
is the title of a work by La Mettrie), abstract idealism 
will seek its explanation, ex contrario, in ideal grounds, 
or teleologically. Or if the former asked, by predilection, 
for efficient causes, and often even ridiculed the demand 
for final causes, it will be to these that the latter will 
direct its principal aim. The notion of design, in short, 
the teleological harmony of all things (pre-established 
harmony), will now be looked to for the means of union 
between spirit and matter, between thinking and being. 
In this way the stand-point of the philosophy of Leib- 
nitz may be briefly characterized. 

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz was born in 1646 at Leipsic, 
where his father held a professor's chair. Having chosen 
Law for his profession, he entered the university in 1661 ; 
he defended, in 1663, for the degree of Doctor of Philo- 
sophy, his dissertation De Principio Individui (a charac- 
teristic thesis when we regard his subsequent philosophiz- 
ing) ; thereafter he went to Jena, later to Altdorf, where 
he took the degree of Doctor of Laws. A chair of juris- 
prudence offered him in Altdorf he declined. His further 
career is an erratic, busy life of movement, chiefly at 
courts, where, as an accomplished courtier, he was em- 
K 



1 94 HISTOR Y OF PHILOSOPH T. 

ployed in the most multiform affairs, diplomatic and other. 
In the year 1672 he went to Paris, charged in effect 
with a commission to persuade Louis xiv. to attempt 
the conquest of Egypt, and so divert that monarch's 
dangerous military inclinations from Germany. From 
Paris he passed to London ; thence, in the capacity of 
councillor and librarian of the learned Catholic duke, 
John Frederic, to Hanover, where he spent the most of 
his remaining life, not without the interruption, how- 
ever, of numerous journeys to Vienna, Berlin, etc. He 
stood on terms of intimacy with the Prussian Queen, 
Sophia Charlotte, a talented lady who gathered around 
her a circle of the most eminent savants of the period, 
and for whom Leibnitz, at her own instigation, had 
undertaken the composition of his Theodicee. His pro- 
posal for the institution of an academy in Berlin obtained 
effect in 1700, and he became its first president. 
Similar proposals in regard to Dresden and Vienna were 
without result. By the Emperor Charles vx, he was 
made a member of the imperial aulic council in 1711, and 
raised to the rank of Baron. Soon afterwards he made 
a considerable stay at Vienna, where, at the suggestion 
of Prince Eugene, he composed his Monadologie. He 
died in 1716. Leibnitz, after Aristotle, is the poly- 
math of the greatest genius that ever lived. He united 
the greatest, the most penetrating power of intellect 
with the richest and most extensive erudition. Ger- 
many has a special call to be proud of him, for, after 
Jacob Bohm, he is the first important philosopher whom 
we Germans can claim. Through him philosophy was 
naturalized among us. Unfortunately, partly the mul- 
tiplicity of his engagements and literary undertakings, 
partly his wandering way of life, prevented him from ac- 
complishing any connected exposition of his philosophy 
as a whole. His views are chiefly set out only in short 
occasional papers, or in letters, and generally in French. 
For this reason an inwardly coherent summary of his 
philosophy is by no means easy, although none of his 
opinions can be said to be isolated from the rest, but all 
of them stand in sufficiently exact connexion with each 
other. The following are the main points of view : — 

1. The System of Monads. — The fundamental charac- 
teristic of the teaching of Leibnitz is its difference from 
that of Spinoza. Spinoza had made the one universal 
substance the single positive element in existence. Leib- 



LEIBNITZ. 195 

nitz, too, takes the notion of substance for the founda- 
tion of his philosophy, but he defines it differently ; 
conceiving substance as eminently the living activity, the 
working force, and adducing as example of this force a 
bent bow, which asserts its power so soon as all external 
obstacles are withdrawn. That active force constitutes 
the quality of substance, is a proposition to which Leib- 
nitz always returns, and with which the other elements 
of his philosophy most intimately cohere. This is appli- 
cable at once to the two further determinations of sub- 
stance (also quite opposed to the theory of Spinoza), 
firstly, that substance is individual, a monad, and, 
secondly, that there is a plurality of monads. Substance, 
in exercising an activity similar to that of an elastic body, 
is essentially an excludent power, repulsion : but what 
excludes others from itself is a personality, an individu- 
ality or individuum, a monad. But this involves the 
second consideration, that of the plurality of the monads. 
It is impossible for one monad to exist, unless others 
exist. The notion of an individuum postulates individua, 
which, as excluded from it, stand over against it. In 
antithesis to the philosophy of Spinoza, therefore, the 
fundamental thesis of that of Leibnitz is this : there is a 
plurality of monads which constitutes the element of all 
reality, the fundamental being of the whole physical and 
spiritual universe. 

2. The Exacter Specification of the Monads is 
the next consideration. The monads of Leibnitz are, in 
general, similar to the Greek atoms. Like the latter, they 
are punctual unities, insusceptible of influence from with- 
out, and indestructible by any external power. If simi- 
lar, they are also, however, dissimilar, and in important 
characteristics. Firstly, the atoms are not distinguished 
from one another ; they are qualitatively alike : the 
monads, on the other hand, are qualitatively different ; 
each is a special world apart; none is like the other. 
To Leibnitz, no two things in the world are quite alike. 
Secondly, the atoms, as extended, are divisible ; the 
monads, on the contrary, are actual (indivisible) points, 
metaphysical points. In order not to be repelled by this 
proposition (for it is natural to object that no aggregate 
of inextended things, like the monads, can ever account 
for extended things), it is necessary for us to recollect 
that Leibnitz regards space, not as real, but only as con- 
fused subjective conception. Thirdly, the monad is a 



196 HISTOBY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

living spiritual being, a soul. In the atomists there is 
nothing whatever of this idea ; but with Leibnitz it plays 
a very important part. Everywhere in the world, there 
is to Leibnitz life, living individuality, and living con- 
nexion of individualities. The monads are not dead, as 
mere extended matter is ; they are self-subsistent, self- 
identical, and indeterminable from without. Considered 
(a.) in themselves, however, they are to be thought as 
centres of living activity, living mutation. As the 
human soul, a monad of elevated rank, is never, even 
when unconscious, free from the action of at least ob- 
scure thought and will, so every other monad continually 
undergoes a variety of modifications or conditions of 
being, correspondent to its own proper quality. Every- 
where there is movement, nowhere is there dead rest. 
And (b.) as it is with the human soul, which sympathizes 
with all the varying states of nature, which mirrors the 
universe, so it is with the monads universally. Each — 
and they are infinitely numerous — is also a mirror, a 
centre of the universe, a microcosm : everything that is 
or happens is reflected in each, but by its own spontane- 
ous power, through which it holds ideally in itself, as if 
in germ, the totality of things. By him, then, who shall 
look near enough, all that in the whole huge universe 
happens, has happened, or will happen, may, in each in- 
dividual monad, be, as it were, read. This Hvingness of 
the monads themselves, and of their relation to the rest 
of the world, is more particularly characterized by Leib- 
nitz in this way, that he represents the life of the monads 
to consist in a continuous sequence of perceptions, that 
is, of dimmer or clearer ideas of their own states, and of 
those of all the rest ; the monads proceed from percep- 
tion to perception ; all, consequently, are souls ; and that 
constitutes the perfection of the world. 

3. The pre-established Harmony. — The universe, 
then, is but sum of the monads. Everything, or every- 
thing that is composite, is an aggregate of monads. 
Every body is an organism, not a single substance but a 
complex of substances, a plurality of monads, just as a 
machine, even in its minutest parts, consists of machines. 
Leibnitz compares bodies to a fish-pond, the component 
parts of which live, though it cannot be said that the 
pond itself lives. The usual conception of things is thus 
completely turned upside down ; from the point of view 
of the monadology, it is not the body, the aggregate, 



LEIBNITZ. 197 

that is the substantial element, but its constituent parts. 
There is no such thing as matter in the vulgar sense of in- 
sensible extension. How then are we to think the inner 
connexion of the universe ? In the following manner. 
Every monad is a percipient being, but each is different 
from each. This difference, plainly, must be essentially 
a difference of perception; there must be as many various 
degrees of perception as there are monads, and these de- 
grees may be arranged in stages. A main distinguishing 
difference is that of the more confused and the more dis- 
tinct cognition. A monad of the lowest rank (une monade 
tonte nue), is one that just conceives and no more, that 
has its place, that is, on the stage of the most confused 
cognition. Leibnitz compares this state to a swoon, or to 
our condition in a dreamless sleep, in which we are not 
indeed without ideas (else we should have none on 
awaking), but in which the ideas neutralize themselves 
by their own number, and never attain to consciousness. 
This is the stage of inorganic nature, on which the life of 
the monads expresses itself only in the form of motion. 
Those are higher monads in which thought is formative 
vitality, but still without consciousness. This is the stage 
of plants. It is a further advance in the life of the 
monads when they attain to sensation and memory, 
which is the case in the animal world. Whilst the in- 
ferior monads only sleep, the animal monads dream. 
When the soul rises to reason and reflection it is named 
spirit. The distinction of the monads, then, is that, 
though each mirrors the whole universe and the same 
universe, each at the same time mirrors it differently, the 
one less, and the other more perfectly. Each contains 
the entire universe, entire infinitude within itself. Each, 
then, resembles God in this, or is a parvus in suo genere 
dens. The difference is this only, that God knows all 
with perfect distinctness, while the monads perceive with 
less or more confusion. The limitation of any one monad, 
then, consists not in its possessing less than any other, or 
even than God, but in its possessing the common fund in a 
more imperfect manner, inasmuch as it attains not to a dis- 
tinct knowledge of all. So conceived, the universe affords 
us a spectacle, as well of the greatest possible unrty, as of 
the greatest possible variety; for if each monad mirrors the 
same universe, each also mirrors it differently. But this is 
a spectacle of the greatest possible perfection, or of absolute 
harmony. For variety in unity is harmony. In another 



198 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

respect also the universe is a system of harmony. Since 
the monads act not on one another, and each follows the 
laws of its own being, there is a risk of the inner agree- 
ment of the universe being disturbed. In what manner 
is this risk precluded ? In this way, that each monad 
stands in living relation to the whole universe and the 
same universe, or that the universe and the life of the 
universe are completely reflected in each. In conse- 
quence of this reciprocal correspondency of their percep- 
tions, the alterations of all the monads are mutually 
parallel ; and precisely in this (as pre-established by God) 
consists the harmony of the all. 

4. What is the relation of God now to the monads ? 
What part does the notion of God play in the system of 
Leibnitz ? One certainly, without much to do. In strict 
consistency, Leibnitz ought not to have entertained any 
question of Theism ; for in his system the harmony of 
the whole must be regarded as having taken the place of 
God. He usually designates God as the sufficient reason 
(la raison suffisante) of all the monads. But he commonly 
regards the final cause of a thing as its sufficient reason. 
Leibnitz, then, on this question, is not far from identify- 
ing God with the absolute final cause. At other times he 
designates God as the primitive simple substance, or as 
the single primitive unity, or again as pure immaterial 
actuality, actus purus (the actuality of the monads, on 
the other hand, is matter, an actuality — a nisus, appetitio 
— not in pure freedom, but limited, obstructed, by a prin- 
ciple of passive resistance to the movement of sponta- 
neity), or even again as monad (this however in evident 
contradiction to his other specifications). It was a hard 
matter for Leibnitz to bring — without abandoning the 
presuppositions of both, — his monadology and his Theism 
into unison. If he assume the substantiality of the 
monads, he runs the risk of losing their dependence on 
God, and in the opposite case, he relapses into Spino- 
zism. 

5. The Relation of Soul and Body admits of a par- 
ticular explanation with reference to the pre-established 
harmony. On the presuppositions of the Monadologie, 
this relation might easily appear enigmatic. If one 
monad cannot act on another, how is it possible for the 
soul to act on the body, to put it in motion, to guide it 
in motion? The pre-established harmony solves this 
problem. Soul and body certainly do follow, each in 



LEIBNITZ. 199 

independence of the other, the laws of its own being, — 
the body, laws that are mechanical ; the soul, laws that 
are ends. But God has instituted so harmonious an 
agreement of the two factors, so complete a parallelism 
of both functions, that, in point of fact, there is a perfect 
unity of soul and body. There are, says Leibnitz, three 
views of the relation between soul and body. The first, 
the usual one, assumes a mutual action of both. This 
view is untenable ; for between spirit and matter there 
can be no reciprocity. The second, that of occasional- 
ism (xxv. 1), attributes this reciprocity to the continual 
assistance of God ; but that is as much as to make God 
a Deus ex machina. There remains, then, for the solu- 
tion of the problem only the assumption of a pre-estab- 
lished harmony. Leibnitz illustrates these three views 
by the following example. Let us suppose two watches, 
the hands of which always indicate exactly the same 
time. This agreement may be explained, firstly, by the 
assumption of an actual union between the hands of both 
watches, in such a manner that the hands of the one 
draw those of the other along with them (the usual 
view) ; secondly, by assuming that a watchmaker always 
sets the one watch by the other (the occasionalistic view) ; 
and finally, by a third assumption, that both watches 
possess so complete a mechanism, that each, though in 
perfect independence, goes also in perfect agreement 
with the other (the pre-established harmony). That the 
soul is immortal (indestructible), follows of itself from 
the nature of the theory. Properly there is no such 
thing as death. What is called death consists only in 
the loss to the soul of a part of the monads which con- 
stituted the machine of its body, at the same time that 
the living principle returns to a condition similar to that 
which it possessed before it appeared on the theatre of 
the world. 

6. On the Theory of Knowledge the consequences 
of the Monadologie have a very important bearing. As, 
with reference to ontology, the philosophy of Leibnitz is 
conditioned by its opposition to Spinozism, so with 
reference to the theory of cognition, it is conditioned by 
its opposition to the empiricism of Locke. Locke's 
inquiry into the human understanding interested Leib- 
nitz without satisfying him ; and, in his Nouveaux EssaU, 
he set on foot, therefore, a counter inquiry, in which he 
was led to defend innate ideas. Bub Leibnitz freed this 



200 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

hypothesis from the imperfect conception of it which had 
justified the objections of Locke. Innate ideas are not 
to be supposed expliciter and consciously, but only £m- 
pliciter and potentially, contained in the soul. The soul 
has power to bring them into existence out of its own 
self. All thoughts are properly innate : they come not 
into the soul from without, but are produced by it from 
its own self. An external influence on the soul is incap- 
able of being thought ; even for the sensations of sense, 
it is not in want of any outer things. If Locke compares 
the soul to a blank sheet of paper, Leibnitz, for his part, 
compares it to a block of marble in which the veins pre- 
figure the shape of the statue. The usual contrast 
between rational and empirical knowledge shrinks for 
Leibnitz, therefore, into the graduated difference of less 
or more distinctness. Amongst the innate theoretical 
ideas, two, as principles of all cognition and of all 
reasoning, occupy for Leibnitz the first rank, — the pro- 
position of contradiction (principium contradictionis), and 
the proposition of the sufficient reason {principium rationis 
sufficientis). To these, as a proposition of the second 
rank, he adds the principium indiscernibilium, or the pro- 
position that there are not in nature two things per- 
fectly alike. 

7. The theological opinions of Leibnitz are expressed 
at fullest in his Theodice'e. This, however, is his 
weakest book, and stands only in a very loose connexion 
with his remaining philosophy. Originating in the re- 
quest of a lady, it belies this origin neither in it3 
form nor in its matter. Not in its form, for in its striv- 
ing to popularity of statement it becomes diffuse and 
unscientific. Not in its matter, for it carries further its 
accommodation to the positive dogma and the presuppo- 
sitions of theology than the scientific principles of the 
system permit. Leibnitz discusses in this work the rela- 
tion of God to the world, in order to demonstrate design 
in this relation, and vindicate God from the imputation 
of having, in his works, done anything without purpose, 
or against reason. Why has the world precisely this 
form ? God surely might have made it quite different 
from what it is. Without doubt, Leibnitz replies, God 
saw the possibility of infinite worlds ; but out of them 
all he chose this. This is the famous doctrine of a best 
of all possible worlds, according to which any more per- 
fect world than the existent world is impossible. But 



BERKELEY. 201 

how, then? Does not the existence of evil contradict 
this ? In answer to this objection, Leibnitz distinguishes 
evil into three sorts, — into metaphysical evil, physical 
evil, and moral evil. Metaphysical evil, or the imperfec- 
tion and finitude of things, is as inseparable from finite 
existence, and therefore unconditionally willed by God, 
necessary. Physical evil (pain, etc. ), is certainly not un- 
conditionally willed by God, but only conditionally, as in 
the form of punishment, or of corrective. Moral evil, or 
the bad, can, on the contrary, not be willed by God. To 
explain its existence, then, and remove its apparent con- 
tradiction to the notion of God, Leibnitz tries several 
shifts. He says, at one time, that the bad is only per- 
mitted by God as a conditio sine qua non y for without the 
bad there were no free will, and without free will there 
were no virtue. At another time he reduces moral to 
metaphysical evil. The bad, he says, is not anything 
real ; it is only absence of perfection, negation, limita- 
tion : it plays the same part as shading in a painting, or 
dissonance in music, neither of which lessens the perfection 
present, but enhances it by contrast. At another time, 
again, he distinguishes between what is material and what 
formal in an act that is bad : the material element of sin, 
or the power to act, comes from God ; but the formal 
element, or what is bad in the act, belongs to man, is 
the result of his limitation : or, as Leibnitz sometimes ex- 
presses it, of his eternal self -predestination. In no case 
is the harmony of the universe disturbed by the bad. 

These are the fundamental ideas of the philosophy of 
Leibnitz. The preceding exposition will have substan- 
tiated the general summary which heads the section. 



XXXIV.—- Berkeley. 

IDEALISM in Leibnitz has not yet reached its ultimate 
extreme. On the one hand, indeed, space, motion, 
material things, were to him phenomena that existed 
only in confused perception ; but, on the other hand, the 
existence of the material world was not directly denied 
by him ; rather, on the contrary, its essential reality was 
acknowledged in the very conception of the world of 
monads. The world of sense is supposed to possess in 
the monads its fixed and substantial foundation. And 
thus, then, Leibnitz, idealist though he be, has not yet 



202 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

quite broken with realism. To have declared corporeal 
existences mere phenomena, mere subjective perceptions 
-Dr conceptions without foundation of objective reality, or, 
in other words, entirely to have denied the reality of an 
objective world of sense, — this would have been the ulti- 
mate consequence of a perfectly pure idealism. This 
consequence — the idealistic counterpart of the realistic 
extreme, materialism — was taken by George Berkeley 
(b. in Ireland 1685, made bishop 1734, d. 1753). We 
must therefore rank him — as completer of idealism — in 
the same series as Leibnitz, although he stands in no 
external connexion with the latter, but is related rather 
to the empiricism of Locke. 

Our sensations, says Berkeley, are altogether subjec- 
tive. "When we believe ourselves to feel or perceive in- 
dependent external objects, that is an error : what we 
so feel and perceive are only our sensations and percep- 
tions themselves. It is evident, for example, that neither 
the distance, nor the size and form of objects are, pro- 
perly, through the sensations of sense seen : these quali- 
ties we infer rather in consequence of having experienced 
that a certain sensation of sight is attended by cer- 
tain sensations of touch. What we see are only colours, 
light, dark, etc., and it is therefore altogether untrue to 
say that we see and feel one and the same thing. In the 
case, then, of the very sensations to which we attach the 
most specially objective character, we are still within our- 
selves. The proper objects of our mind are only our own 
affections, and all objective ideas, therefore, are but our 
own sensations. An idea can just as little as a sensation 
exist apart from the subject of it. What are called things 
consequently exist only in our percipient mind : their 
esse is a mere percipi. Almost all philosophers are mis- 
led by the fundamental error of conceiving material things 
to exist apart from the mind that perceives them, and of 
failing to see that things are only something mental. How 
could material things possibly produce anything so utterly 
different from themselves as sensations and perceptions ? 
There exists not, then, any material external world : 
only spirits exist, thinking beings whose nature consists of 
conception and volition. But whence then do we receive 
our sensations, which come to us without our help, which 
are not products of our own will, like the forms of phan- 
tasy ? We receive them from a spirit superior to our own 
(for only a spirit were able to produce ideas in us), we 



WOLFF. 203 

receive them from God. God, then, gives us the ideas ; 
but it were a contradiction for a being to communicate 
ideas and yet have none : the ideas consequently, which 
we receive from God, exist in God. In God they may be 
called archetypes, in us ectypes. This theory, according 
to Berkeley, nevertheless, does not deny to objects a 
reality independent of us ; it denies only the possibility 
of their existing anywhere but in a mind. Instead, 
therefore, of speaking of a connected nature in which the 
sun (say) were the cause of heat, etc., we ought to ex- 
press ourselves with accuracy thus : through the visual 
sensation, God announces to us that we shall soon expe- 
rience a tactual one of heat. By nature we must under- 
stand, therefore, only the succession or co-existence of 
ideas ; by laws of nature, again, the constant order in 
which they accompany or follow one another, that is, 
the laws of their associations. This consistent pure 
idealism is, in its complete denial of matter in the strict 
sense, the surest way, according to Berkeley, of destroy- 
ing scepticism and atheism. 



XXXV.— Wolff. 

THE idealism of Berkeley remained naturally with- 
out any further development. The philosophy of 
Leibnitz, on the other hand, found continuation and re- 
arrangement at the hands of Christian Wolff (b. 1679 at 
Breslau ; removed, by a cabinet-order of Nov. 8, 1723, 
from his chair of philosophy at Halle, after a long course 
of disagreement with the theological professors there, 
because the doctrines he taught were opposed to the 
revealed truth of the Word of God, and required, under 
penalty of the halter, to quit the Prussian territory within 
forty-eight hours; then Professor in Marburg, recalled 
by Frederic II. immediately on his accession to the throne ; 
subsequently raised to the rank of Baron of the Empire ; 
d. 1754). In his main thoughts (with omission, it is true, 
of the bolder ideas of his predecessor) he adhered to the 
philosophy of Leibnitz, — an adhesion which he himself 
admits, though he resists the identification of his philo- 
sophy with that of Leibnitz, and rejects the name Philo- 
sophia Leibnitio -Wolfiana, originated by his disciple 
Bilfinger. Wolff's historical merit is threefold. He was 
the first, in especial, to claim again, in the name of philo- 



204 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

sophy, the entire field of knowledge — the first who at- 
tempted to construct again a systematic whole of doc- 
trine, an encyclopaedia of philosophy in the highest sense 
of the word. If he has not indeed contributed much 
new material to the work, he has at least skilfully availed 
himself of that already provided to his hand, and ar- 
ranged it with a certain architectonic spirit. Secondly, 
he again made philosophical method as such an object of 
attention. His own method, indeed, as the mathemati- 
cal (mathematico-syllogistic) method recommended by 
Leibnitz, is a method quite external to the matter ; but 
even this platitudinizing formalism (for example, the 
eighth theorem in Wolff's Elements of Architecture runs 
thus : ' A window must be wide enough to allow two 
persons to place themselves conveniently at it/ a theo- 
rem which is then proved thus : * It is a common custom 
to place one's-self at a window, and look from it in com- 
pany with another person. As now it is the duty of the 
architect to consult in all respects the intentions of the 
builder (Sect. 1), he will necessarily make the window 
wide enough to allow two persons to place themselves 
conveniently at it — q. e. d. 9 ) 9 even this formalism pos- 
sesses the advantage of rendering philosophical mat- 
ter more readily intelligible. Wolff, finally, first taught 
philosophy to speak German, an accomplishment which 
it has never since unlearned. To him (after Leibnitz, to 
whom the first impulse is due) belongs the merit of hav- 
ing for ever raised the German language into the organ 
of philosophy. 

As regards the matter and scientific classification of the 
Wolfian philosophy, the following remarks may suffice. 
Wolff defines philosophy to be the science of the possible, 
as such. Possible is what involves no contradiction. 
Wolff defends this definition from the reproach of assump- 
tion. He does not pretend by it, he says, that he or any 
philosopher knows all that is possible. He means by it 
only to claim for philosophy the whole field of human 
knowledge ; and he thinks it always better, in defining 
philosophy, to have in view the highest perfection of 
which it is capable, however much it may, in actuality, 
fall short of it. Of what does this science of the possible 
consist ? Wolff, relying on the empirical fact, that there 
are in us two faculties, one of cognition and another of 
volition, divides philosophy into two great branches, 
into theoretical philosophy (an expression, however. 



WOLFF. 205 

which is first employed by his disciples) or metaphysics, 
and into practical philosophy. Logic precedes both as 
propaedeutical of the study of philosophy in general. 
Metaphysics, again, are subdivided into (a.) Ontology, 
(b.) Cosmology, (c.) Psychology, (d.) Natural Theology ; 
while the subdivisions of practical philosophy are 
(a.) Ethics (the object of which is man as man), (b.) Eco- 
nomics (the object of which is man as member of the 
family), and (c) Politics (the object of which is man as 
member of the state). 

Ontology, then, is the first part of metaphysics. It 
treats of what are now called categories, of those radical 
notions of thought which as applicable to all objects, 
must be first investigated. Aristotle was the first to pro- 
pose a table of such principles, but he had got at his 
categories only empirically. Nor does it succeed much 
better with the ontology of Wolff, which looks like a 
philosophical vocabulary. At the top of it Wolff places 
the proposition of contradiction : the same thing cannot 
at once be and not be. The notion of possibility comes 
next. Possible is what involves no contradiction. That 
is necessary, the contrary of which is a contradiction ; 
that contingent, the contrary of which is equally possible. 
All that is possible, though only imaginary, is something ; 
while whatever neither is, nor is possible, is nothing. 
When one thing is made up of many things, the former 
is a whole, the latter are parts. The magnitude of any- 
thing lies in the number of its parts. If one thing A im- 
plies something that renders it intelligible why another 
thing B is, then that in A that renders B intelligible is 
the ground of B. The whole A that contains the ground 
is a cause. What contains the ground of its other quali- 
ties is the principle (nature) of the thing. Space is the 
order of things that are together ; place the special man- 
ner in which one thing exists simultaneously with all 
others. Motion is change of place. Time is the order 
of what is successive, etc. (b.) Cosmology. — Wolff de- 
fines the world to be a series of mutable things which 
exist beside and follow after one another, but as a whole 
are so connected with one another that the one always 
contains the ground of the other. Things are connected 
together either in space or time. The world, by reason 
of this universal connexion, is one, a compound. The 
mode of composition constitutes the nature of the world. 
This mode is incapable of change. Ingredients can 



206 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

neither be added to it, nor taken from it. All altera- 
tions in the world must arise from its own nature. In 
this reference the world is a machine. Events in the 
world are only hypothetically necessary, so far, that is, 
as those that preceded them have been so and so ; they 
are contingent, so far as the world might have been con- 
stituted differently. As regards the question whether 
the world has a beginning in time, Wolff vacillates. As 
God is independent of time, the world again eternally in 
time, the latter cannot be eternal in the same manner as 
God. Neither space nor time is to Wolff anything sub- 
stantial. A body is what is composed of matter, and 
possesses moving force. The forces of a body are named 
collectively its nature, and the sum of all beings is nature 
in general. What has its ground in the nature of the 
world, is natural ; what not, is supernatural, or a miracle. 
Wolff treats, lastly, of the perfection and imperfection of 
the world. The perfection of the world lies in this, that 
all things, whether simultaneous or successive, mutually 
agree. But as everything has its own special rules, each 
individual must dispense with as much perfection as is 
necessary to the symmetry of the whole, (c.) Rational 
psychology. — What in us is conscious of its own self, that 
is soul. The soul is conscious of other things also. Con- 
sciousness is distinct or indistinct. Distinct conscious- 
ness is thought. The soul is a simple, incorporeal sub- 
stance. It possesses the power of perceiving the world. 
In this sense a soul may be conceded, to the lower ani- 
mals ; but a soul possessed of understanding and will, is 
spirit, and spirit is the possession of man alone. A spirit 
which is in union with a body is properly a soul, and 
this is the distinction between man and the superior 
beings. The movements of the soul and those of the 
body mutually agree by reason of the pre-established 
harmony. The freedom of the human will consists in 
the power to choose which of two possible things appears 
the better. But the will does not decide without motives ; 
it always chooses that only which it esteems preferable. 
The will would appear thus to be compelled to act by its 
ideas ; but the understanding is not compelled to accept 
something as good or as bad ; and neither is the will, 
therefore, under compulsion, but free. Our souls, as 
simple, are indivisible, and therefore imperishable ; the 
lower animals, however, being devoid of understanding, 
are incapable after death of reflecting on their bypast 



THE GERMAN ILLUMINATION. 207 

life. Only the human soul is capable of this, and only 
the human soul, therefore, is immortal, (d.) Natural 
Theology. — Wolff here proves the existence of God by the 
cosmological argument. God might have created many 
worlds, but this world he created as the best. This world 
is called into existence by the will of God. His intention 
in creating it was the expression of his perfection. The 
evil in the world springs not from the will of God, but 
from the limited nature of human things. God permits 
it only as means to the good. 

This brief aphoristic exposition of Wolff's metaphysics 
will show how closely it is related to that of Leibnitz. 
The latter loses, however, in speculative depth, in con- 
sequence of the exclusively popular form (form of under- 
standing proper) which it receives at the hands of Wolff. 
What with Wolff recedes most into the background is the 
specific peculiarity of the monadology : his simple beings 
are not concipient like the monads, but return more to 
the nature of the atoms : hence in his case numerous in- 
consistencies and contradictions. His special metaphysi- 
cal value lies in the ontology, to which he has given a 
much more accurate development than his predecessors. 
A multitude of technical terms owe to him their forma- 
tion and introduction into the language of philosophy. 

The philosophy of Wolff, clear and readily intelligible 
as it was, more accessible, moreover, than that of Leib- 
nitz, in consequence of being composed in German, soon 
became popular philosophy, and acquired an extensive in- 
fluence. Among those who have made themselves meri- 
torious by its scientific extension, are particularly to be 
mentioned Thumming (1687-1728), Bilfinger (1693-1750), 
Baumeister (1708-1785), Baumgarten (of aesthetic renown, 
1714-1762), and Meier (1718-1777), the disciple of Baum- 
garten. 



XXXVI. — The German Illumination. 

UNDER the influence of the Leibnitz-Wolfian philo- 
sophy, but without any scientific connexion with 
it, there arose in Germany, during the second half of the 
eighteenth century, a popular philosophy of an eclectic 
nature, the many forms of which have been compre- 
hended under the general name of the German illumina- 
tion. The importance of this movement consists les3 in 



208 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

its relation to the history of philosophy than in its rela- 
tion to the history of general culture : for it is at for- 
mation and information, the intellectual production of 
people of liberal minds (Basedow), that it aims ; and thus 
enlightened reflection, intelligent moralization (in solilo- 
quies, letters, morning meditations, etc.), is the form in 
which it philosophizes. It is the German counterpart of 
the French illumination. As the latter closes the realistic 
series with its own extreme, materialism or objectivity 
devoid of mind, so the former brings the idealistic series 
to an end in its tendency to an extreme of subjectivity 
from which all objectivity has been banished. To people 
of this way of thinking, the empirical individual ego, as 
such, ranks as the absolute, as exclusive authority ; for it 
they forget all else, or rather all else has value for them 
only in proportion as it relates to the subject, subserves 
the subject, contributes to the advancement and inter- 
nal satisfaction of the subject. It is thus that the 
question of the immortality of the soul is now the chief 
philosophical problem (in which reference Mendelssohn, 
1729-1786, is particularly to be named as the most im- 
portant individual in the movement) ; the eternal dura- 
tion of the soul is the chief object of interest ; the more 
objective ideas or articles of faith, as the personality of 
God, for instance, are not by any means questioned, but 
in general, little interest can be felt in them, for that 
nothing can be known of God is now a fixed conviction. 
Both being of subjective interest, scientific attention is 
bestowed in the second place on moral philosophy (Garve, 
1742-1798, Engel, 1741-1802, Abbt, 1738-1766) and 
sesthetics (particularly Sulzer, 1720-1779). In general 
the consideration of what is profitable, of the particular 
end, is what occupies the foreground ; utility is the spe- 
cial criterion of truth ; what serves not the subject, ad- 
vances not the interests of the subject, is thrown aside. In 
harmony with this intellectual tendency is that towards a 
predominatingly teleological mode of viewing nature (Rei- 
marus, 1694-1765), as well as the eudaemonistic character 
of the ethical principles in vogue. The happiness of the 
individual is regarded as the highest principle, as the 
supreme end {Basedow, 1723-1790). Reimarus wrote a 
work on the ' advantages ' of religion, and endeavoured 
to prove in it that the tendency of religion is not to in- 
jure earthly enjoyments, but rather to add to them. In 
the same way Steinbart (1738-1809) laboured in several 



TRANSITION' TO KANT. 209 

works to establish the thesis, that all wisdom consists in 
the attainment of happiness, that is of enduring pleasure, 
and that the Christian religion, far from forbidding this, is 
itself a system of eudsemonism. For the rest, there was 
entertained towards Christianity only a moderate respect ; 
any claim, on its part, to an authority that might seem dis- 
agreeable to the subject (as in the dogma of a Hell) was 
resisted ; the desire, on the whole, was to replace the posi- 
tive dogma, so far as possible, by natural religion ; Reima- 
rus, for example, the most zealous defender of theism and 
natural theology, is the author also of the Wolffenbuttel 
Fragments. The new-won consciousness of his own rights 
was exercised by the subject in criticising the positive and 
traditional element (the evangelical history), and in ration- 
alizing the supernatural. Finally, the subjective character 
of the period reveals itself in the prevalent literary man- 
nerism of autobiographies, confessions, etc. ; the isolated 
ego is an object to itself of admiring study (Rousseau, 
1712-1778, and his Confessions) ; it holds the mirror up to 
its own particular states, its own sentiments, its own excel* 
lent intentions — a coquetting with its own self that often 
rises to morbid sentimentality. From what has been said, 
then, it will now appear that the extreme of subjectivity 
constitutes the character of the illumination in Germany. 
This illumination, therefore, forms the completion and the 
close of the previous idealistic tendency. 



XXXVII.— Transition to Kant 

IDEALISM and realism, the objects of our attention 
for some time now, have both ended in one-sided 
extremes. Instead of reconciling from within, as it were, 
the contradiction of thought and existence, they have 
both issued in a denial of the one or the other factor. 
To realism matter was one-sidedly the absolute, to 
idealism the empirical ego, extremes both which threat- 
ened to convert philosophy into unphilosophy. In Ger- 
many, as in France, indeed, it had sunk to the flattest 
popular philosophy. But now Kant appeared, and agaiu 
united in a common bed the two branches that, isolated 
from each other, seemed on the point of being lost in the 
sands. Kant is the great restorer of philosophy, again 
conjoining into unity and totality the one-sided philo- 
sophical endeavours of those who preceded him. Poleml- 



210 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

cally or irenically lie is related to all of them, to Locke 
as much, as to Hume, to the Scottish philosophers not less 
than to the earlier English and French moralists, to the 
Leibnitz-Wolfian philosophy as well as to the materialism 
of the French, and the eudaemonism of the German illumi- 
nation. As regards his relation, in particular, to the 
one-sided realistic and idealistic tendencies, it was consti- 
tuted as follows. While, on the one hand, empiricism 
assigned to the ego, in subordination to the world of 
sense, a rdle of pure passivity, and while idealism, on the 
other hand, assigned to it, in superiority to the world of 
sense and in its sufficiency for its own self, a rdle of pure 
activity, Kant, for his part, endeavoured to harmonize 
the pretensions of both. He proclaimed the ego, as prac- 
tical ego, free and autonomous, the unconditioned arbiter 
of itself, if as theoretical ego, receptive certainly, and con- 
ditioned by the world of sense. Further, he proclaimed 
the existence of both sides in the theoretical ego itself ; 
for if it is true with empiricism, that experience is the 
only field of knowledge, that to experience we owe all the 
matter of knowledge, it is equally true with idealism 
that there exists in our knowledge, notwithstanding, an 
a priori factor, that we use notions in experience, inderi- 
vative from experience, but provided for experience a 
priori in the mind. 

In order still further to facilitate a general view of the 
vast and complicated structures which compose the philo- 
sophy of Kant, we proceed to add a preliminary ex- 
planation of its fundamental notions, together with a 
concise exposition of its chief propositions and chief re- 
sults. As object of his critical inquiry, Kant took the 
function of cognition in man, or, more simply, the origin 
of our experience. It is as exercising this scrutiny of 
cognition, that his philosophy is critical, is criticism. 
Again, it is in consequence of Kant having called his con- 
sideration of the relation of cognition to the objects of 
cognition a transcendental reflection that his philosophy 
has received the further name of transcendental ; and 
that to Kant is a transcendental (this word is to be dis- 
tinguished from transcendent), cognition, 4 which has to 
do not so much with the objects, as with our knowing of 
the objects, so far as there is any possibility of an a priori 
knowing of them.' The mentioned scrutiny now occurs 
in the Kritih of Pure Reason, and yields the following 
re&ults. All cognition is the product of two factors,— 



TRANSITION TO KANT. 211 

the cognising subject and the cognised objects. The one 
factor, the external object, contributes the material, the 
empirical material, of knowledge ; the other factor, the 
subject, contributes the form, — those notions, namely, by- 
virtue of which alone any connected knowledge, any 
synthesis of individual perceptions into a whole of ex- 
perience, is possible. Were there no external world, 
there were no perceptions ; and were there no a priori 
notions, these perceptions were an indefinite plurality 
and maninessy without mutual combination, and without 
connexion in the unity of an understood whole. In that 
case there would not be any such thing as experience. 
Therefore : whilst perceptions without notions are blind, 
and notions without perceptions are void, cognition 
(knowledge) is a union of both, in this way, that it fills 
up the frames of the notions with the matter of experi- 
ence, or disposes the matter of experience into the net of 
the notions. Nevertheless, we do not know things as 
they are in themselves. First, because of the forms 
native to the mind, that is, because of the categories. 
In adding to the given manifold of perception, as the 
matter of cognition, our own notions as its form, we 
must, it is plain, produce some change in the objects : 
these objects, evidently, are not thought as they are in 
themselves, but only as we apprehend them ; they appear 
to us only as modified by categories. Besides this there is 
another subjective addition. In the second place, that is, 
we cognise things not as they are in themselves, because 
the very perceptions which we embrace in the frames of 
our notions, are not pure and uncoloured, but have been 
equally obliged to traverse a subjective medium, time 
and space namely, which are the universal forms of all 
objects of sense. Space and time are also subjective ad- 
ditions, then, forms of sensuous perception, and no less 
native to the mind than the a priori notions, the cate- 
gories themselves. Whatever is to be perceived, must 
be perceived in time and space ; without them perception 
is impossible. It follows, then, that we only know ap- 
pearances, not things themselves, in their own true 
nature, as divested of space and time. 

If these propositions of Kant be superficially taken, it 
may appear as if the Kantian criticism were nowise sub- 
stantially in advance of the empiricism of Locke. Never- 
theless, it is in advance, even if for nothing else than the 
investigation of the a priori notions. That the notions 



212 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

cause and effect, substance and accident, and others, the 
like, which the human mind finds itself obliged to think 
into all perceptions of sense, and under which it really 
thinks everything that it does think, — that these arise 
not from sensuous experience, this Kant is compelled to 
acknowledge as well as Hume. For example, when affec- 
tions reach us from several directions, when we perceive 
a white colour, a sweet taste, a rough surface, etc., and 
now speak of a single thing, a piece of sugar perhaps, it 
is only the manifold of the sensations that is given us 
from without, while the notion of unity cannot come to 
us through sensation, but is a notion added to the mani- 
fold, a category. But Kant now, instead of denying the 
reality of these notions, took a different step, and assigned 
to the mental activity (which supplies these forms of 
thought to the matter of experience) a special and pecu- 
liar province. He demonstrated these forms of thought 
to be immanent laws of the intellect, necessary principles 
of action in the understanding that are essential to every 
experience, and he endeavoured to attain the complete 
system of them by an analysis of the faculty of thought. 
(They are twelve in number : unity, plurality, totality ; 
reality, negation, limitation ; substantiality, causality, 
reciprocity ; possibility, actuality, necessity.) Kant's 
philosophy, then, is not empiricism, but idealism. It is 
not that dogmatic idealism, however, which transfers all 
reality to conception, but rather a critical subjective 
idealism that distinguishes in the conception (perception) 
an objective and a subjective element, and vindicates for 
the latter a place as important in every act of cognition 
as is that of the former. 

From what has been said, there result — and the one 
in consequence of the other — the three chief propositions 
under which the Kantian cognitive theory may be com- 
prehended : 1. We know only appearances, not things in 
themselves. The empirical matter that comes to us from 
without is, in consequence of our own subjective addi- 
tions (for we receive this matter first of all into the sub- 
jective frames of time and space, and then into the 
equally subjective forms of the innate notions), so worked 
up and relatively altered that, like the reflection of a 
luminous body variously bent and broken by the surface 
of a mirror, it no longer represents the thing itself, in its 
original quality, pure and unmixed. 2. Nevertheless, 
experience alone is our field of knowledge, and any science 



TRANSITION TO KANT. 213 

of the unconditioned does not exist. And naturally so : 
for as every act of cognition is a product of empirical 
matter and intellectual form, or is founded on the co- 
operation of sense and understanding, any cognition of 
things is impossible where the factor of empirical matter 
fails. Knowledge through intellectual notions alone is 
illusory, inasmuch as, for the notion of the unconditioned, 
which understanding sets up, sense is unable to show the 
unconditioned object which should correspond to it. The 
question, therefore, which Kant placed at the head of his 
entire critique, How are synthetic judgments (judgments 
of extension as in contradistinction to analytic judg- 
ments, judgments of explanation), possible a priori? 
can we, a priori, by thought alone, extend our know- 
ledge beyond experience of sense? is knowledge of the 
supersensuous possible ? — must be answered by an un- 
conditional No. 3. If, nevertheless, human cognition 
will overstep the limits of experience assigned to it, that 
is to say, if it will become transcendent, then it can only 
involve itself in the greatest contradictions. The three 
ideas of reason — namely, (a.) the psychological idea of an 
absolute subject, that is, of the soul or of the immor- 
tality ; (b.) the cosmological idea of the world as totality 
of all conditions and phenomena; (c.) the theological 
idea of an all-perfect being — are so much without appli- 
cation to empirical reality, so much mere fabrications of 
reason, regulative, not constitutive principles, to which 
no objective sensuous experience corresponds, that they 
rather lead — if applied to experience, or conceived, that 
is, as actually existent objects — to the most glaring logi- 
cal errors, to the most striking paralogisms and sophisms. 
Kant has attempted to demonstrate these errors, whether 
unavoidable contradictions of reason with its own self, 
or only subreptions and false conclusions, in the case of 
all the ideas of reason. By way of example, let us take 
the cosmological idea. Directly reason, in reference to 
this idea, in reference to the cosmical whole, proceeds to 
give utterance to its transcendental dicta, directly it seeks 
to apply, that is, the forms of the finite to the infinite, it 
is at once seen, that in all cases the antithesis of the dic- 
tum is quite as demonstrable as the thesis. The thesis, 
The world has limits in space and a commencement in 
time ; the antithesis, The world has no limits in space 
and no commencement in time : these propositions are 
both susceptible of an equal proof. It follows, conse- 



214 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

quently, that speculative cosmology is but an assumption 
of reason. The theological idea, for its part again, rests 
on mere logical subreptions and vicious conclusions, as 
(with great acuteness) was proved by Kant in the case of 
the various arguments hitherto dogmatically proposed f @r 
the existence of God. It is impossible, therefore, in the 
theoretical sphere, and with perfect stringency in all re- 
spects, to prove and comprehend the existence of the soul 
as a real subject, the existence of the world as a single 
system, and the existence of God as a supreme being : 
the metaphysical problems proper lie beyond the limits 
of philosophical knowledge. 

This is the negative of the Kantian philosophy : its 
supplementing positive is to be found in the Kritik of 
Practical Reason. If mind, theoretically or cognitively, 
is under condition and control of the objects of sense- 
no complete act of knowledge being possible without an 
element of perception, — practically, or as regards action, 
it directly transcends the given element (the motive of 
sense), it is determined only by the categorical imperative, 
by the moral law, by its own self, and is therefore free 
and autonomous. The ends it pursues are such as it — 
a moral spirit — gives itself. External objects are no 
longer arbiters and masters for it ; it has no longer to 
adapt itself to them when it would become participant of 
truth ; it is they now must serve it, mere selfless (uncon- 
scious) means for the realization of the moral law. If the 
theoretical spirit was bound to the phenomenal world in 
its blind obedience to mere necessity, the practical spirit, 
on the contrary, belongs, through its relation to the abso- 
lute end, through its own essential freedom, to a purely 
intelligible, to a supersensuous world. This is Kant's 
practical idealism, which directly leads to the three (as 
theoretical verities previously declared insufficient) prac- 
tical postulates — the immortality of the soul, the freedom 
of the will, and the existence of God. So much by way 
of introduction : we proceed now to the more systematic 
exposition of the philosophy of Kant. 



XXXVIII.— Kant. 

IMMANUEL KANT was born, April 22, 1724, at 
Konigsberg in Prussia. His father, an honest, worthy 
saddler, and his mother, a woman of piety and intelli- 



KANT. 215: 

gence, exercised over him from his earliest years a 
wholesome influence. In the year 1740 he entered the 
university as a student of theology, but applied himself 
by inclination to the study of philosophy, mathematics, 
and physics. He opened his literary career in his twenty- 
third year, 1747, with an essay ' Thoughts on the true Es- 
timate of Motive Forces.' For several years, he was obliged 
by circumstances to act as domestic tutor in various families 
in the neighbourhood of Konigsberg. In the year 1755 he 
settled at the university as a private lecturer (where he re- 
mained as such for fifteen years), and gave courses of logic, 
metaphysics, physics, mathematics, and, at a later period, 
of morals, anthropology, and physical geography, mostly 
in the sense of the Wolfian school, though not without an 
early expression of his doubts with respect to dogmatism. 
At the same time, after the publication of his first disser- 
tation, he was indefatigable as an author, although his 
decisive great book, the Kritik of Pure Reason, appeared 
only in his fifty-seventh year, 1781, and was followed by 
his Kritik of Practical Reason in 1788, as by his Kritik of 
Judgment in 1790. In the year 1770, at the age of forty- 
six, he became an ordinary professor of logic and meta- 
physics, the duties of which position he continued actively 
to carry on till 1797, after which year he was prevented 
from lecturing by the increasing frailties of age. Calls to 
Jena, to Erlangen, to Halle, he declined. Soon the noblest 
as well as the most studious of knowledge thronged 
from the whole of Germany to Konigsberg, in order to 
place themselves at the feet of the Prussian sage. One 
of his admirers, Reuss, professor of philosophy at "Wiirz- 
burg, and who was able to make only a very short stay 
at Konigsberg, entered the room of Kant with the words : 
1 He had come no less than 760 miles just to see him and 
speak to him.' During the last seventeen years of his 
life he occupied a small house with a garden in a retired 
part of the town, where he was able to pursue his own 
quiet and regular mode of life without disturbance. He 
lived extremely simply, but liked a good table and a com- 
fortable social meal. Kant was never out of his own pro- 
vince — never as far even as Dantzic. His longest journeys 
were to neighbouring country houses. Nevertheless he 
acquired by the reading of descriptions of travels a very 
accurate knowledge of the surface of the globe, as indeed 
is specially proved by his lectures on physical geography. 
He was well acquainted with all Rousseau's works, and the 



216 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Entile, in particular, on its first appearance, prevented 
him for several days from taking his usual walks. Kant 
died February 12, 1804, in the eightieth year of his age. 
He was of middle size, slenderly built, with blue eyes, 
and always healthy, till in his old age he became childish. 
He never married. A strict regard for truth, pure in- 
tegrity, and simple modesty distinguished his character. 

Though Kant's great, era-making work, the Kritik of 
Pure Reason, only appeared in 1781, its author had in 
smaller works long been making efforts in the same direc- 
tion ; and this was particularly the case with his inaugu 
ral dissertation ' On the Form and Principles of the Sen- 
sible and the Intelligible World,' which was published 
in 1770. The internal genesis of his critical position was 
attributed by Kant especially to Hume. ' It was reflec- 
tion on David Hume that several years ago first broke 
my dogmatic slumber, and gave a completely new direc- 
tion to my inquiries in the field of speculative philo- 
sophy. ' The critical idea first developed itself in Kant, 
then, on the occasion of his abandonment of the dogmatic 
metaphysical school, the Wolfi an philosophy, in which he 
had been educated, for the study of empiricism in the 
sceptical form which had been impressed upon it by 
Hume. ' Hitherto,' says Kant at the close of his Kritik 
of Pure Reason, i there was no choice but to proceed 
either dogmatically like Wolff, or sceptically like Hume. 
The critical path is the only one that is still open. If 
the reader has had the courtesy and the patience to travel 
it thus far in my society he may now contribute his 
help towards the conversion of this footpath into a high- 
way, by which, what many centuries were unable to 
effect, what, indeed, was impossible before the expiration 
of the present century, there shall be attained complete 
satisfaction for human reason in that which has always 
occupied its curiosity, but always hitherto in vain.' 
Kant, lastly, possessed the clearest consciousness of 
the relation of criticism to all preceding philosophy. He 
compares the revolution effected by himself in philosophy 
to that effected by Copernicus in astronomy. * Hitherto 
the assumption was, that all our knowledge must adapt 
itself to the objects ; but every attempt to ascertain any- 
thing in regard to them a priori by notions, in order to Q. 
extend our knowledge, was by such a presupposition 
necessarily rendered vain. Suppose we now try, then, 
whether better success may not attend us in the pro- 






KANT. 217 

blems of metaphysics, if we assume objects to be under a 
necessity of adapting themselves to the nature of our 
cognition. The proposal, at all events, evidently harmo- 
nizes better with the desired possibility of an a priori 
knowledge which should be able to determine something 
in regard to objects before they were yet given to us. It is 
with us here as it was at first with the idea of Copernicus, 
who, dissatisfied with the theory of the heavens, on the 
assumption that the starry host circled round the specta- 
tor, tried whether it would not succeed better, as regarded 
explanation, if, on the contrary, he supposed the spec- 
tator to move and the stars to remain at rest.' In these 
words, the principle of subjective idealism is expressed in 
the clearest manner and with the most perfect conscious- 
ness. 

In the succeeding exposition of the Kantian philosophy 
we follow, as the most appropriate, the course which has 
been taken by Kant himself. Kant's principle of division 
and disposition is a psychological one. All the faculties 
of the soul, he says, may be reduced to three, which three 
admit not of being again reduced to any other. They 
ire, cognition, emotion, will. For all the three the first 
contains the principles, the regulating laws. So far as 
cognition contains the principles of its own act, it is 
theoretical reason. So far again as it contains the prin- 
ciples of will, it is practical reason. And so far, lastly, 
as it contains the principles of the emotion of pleasure 
and pain, it is a faculty of judgment. The Kantian philo- 
sophy (on its critical side) falls thus into three Kritiken 
(critiques) : 1. The Kritik of (pure) Theoretic Reason ; 2. 
The Kritik of Practical Reason ; and 3. The Kritik of 
Judgment. 

I. — The Kritik of Pure Reason. 

The Kritik of Pure Reason, says Kant, is the ground- 
plan of all our possessions through pure reason (of 
all that we can know a priori), systematically arranged. 
What are these possessions ? What is our contribution 
to the effecting of an act of perception ? With this ob- 
ject before him, Kant passes under review the two main 
stadia of our theoretical consciousness, the two main 
factors of all cognition : sense and understanding. First, 
then, what is the a priori possession of our perceptive 
faculty, so far as it is sensuous, and, second, what is the 






218 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

a priori possession (applicable in perception) of our under- 
standing ? The first question is considered in the tran- 
scendental JZsthetic (a term which is to be taken naturally 
not in its usual, but in its etymological import, as 
* science of the a priori principles of sense ') ; the second, 
in the transcendental Logic (specially in the Analytic). 
Sense and understanding, namely — explanatorily to pre- 
mise this — are the two factors of all perceptive cognition, 
the two stems, as Kant expresses it, of knowledge, which 
spring, perhaps, from a common but unknown root. 
Sense is the receptivity, understanding the spontaneity 
of our cognitive faculty ; by means of sense, which alone 
affords us intuitions (in the signification of the sensuous 
perceptive elements), are objects given to us ; by means 
of understanding, which forms notions, are objects thought 
(but still in a perceptive reference). Notions withotit 
intuitions (perceptive elements strictly sensuous) are 
empty : without notions such intuitions (or perceptions) 
are blind. Perceptions (proper) and notions constitute 
the mutually complementary constituents of our intel- 
lectual activity. What now are the a priori ('lying 
ready in the mind from the first'), principles of our 
sensuous, what those of our thinking faculty, in the 
operation, of cognition? The first of these questions is 
answered, as said, in 

1 . The transcendental uEsthetic. — To anticipate at once 
the answer : the a priori principles of sense, the innate 
forms of sensuous perception, are space and time. Space, 
namely, is the form of external sense by means of which 
objects are given to us as existent without us, and as ex- 
istent also apart from and beside one another. If we 
abstract from all that belongs to the matter of sensation 
(in any perception), there remains behind only space, as 
the universal form into which all the materials of the ex- 
ternal sense dispose themselves. If we abstract from all 
that belongs to the matter of our inner sense, there re- 
mains the time which the mental movement occupied. 
Space and time are the ultimate forms of external and 
internal sense. That these forms are contained a priori 
in the human mind, Kant proves, first directly in what 
he calls the metaphysical exposition, from the nature of 
the very notions of them, and, second, indirectly, in what 
he calls the transcendental exposition, by demonstrating 
that, unless these notions were really a priori, certain 
sciences of undoubted truth would be altogether impos- 




KANT. 219 

sible. (1.) The metaphysical exposition has to show, (a.) 
that time and space are given a priori, (b.) that both, 
nevertheless, belong to sense (to the ' aesthetic, ' then), 
and not to the understanding (not to the * logic '), that is 
to say, that they are perceptions (proper), and not con- 
ceptions (notions), (a.) That space and time are a priori 
is evident from this, that every experience, if only to be 
able to take place, always presupposes time and space as 
already existent. I perceive something external to my- 
self : but this external to myself presupposes space. 
Further, I have sensations either together or after one 
another : these relations, it is obvious, presuppose the 
existence of time, (b,) Space and time are not on this 
account, however, notions, but forms of sensuous percep- 
tion, or simply perceptions. For general notions contain 
their particulars only under them, and not as parts in 
them ; whereas all particular spaces and all particular 
times are contained in space and time generally. (2.) In 
the transcendental exposition Kant makes good his indi- 
rect proof by showing that certain universally accepted 
sciences are inconceivable without assuming the a-priority 
of space and time. Pure mathematics is only possible, 
if space and time are pure and not empirical perceptions. 
Kant, therefore, placed the whole problem of the tran- 
scendental aesthetic in the single question, How are the 
pure mathematical sciences possible? Time and space, 
says Kant, are the element in which pure mathematics 
moves. But mathematics takes it for granted that its 
propositions are necessary and universal. Necessary and 
universal propositions, however, can never originate in 
experience ; they must have a foundation a priori : time 
and space, consequently, from which mathematics takes 
its principles, cannot possibly be given a posteriori, but 
necessarily a priori, as pure (non-empirical) intuitions or 
perceptions of- — general not special — sense. There is, 
therefore, an a priori knowledge, a science founded on 
a priori grounds ; and he who would deny this must 
deny at the same time the possibility of mathematics. 
But if the foundations of mathematics are a priori per- 
ceptions, it is natural to infer further that there will also 
be a priori notions, and the possibility consequently of a 
pure science of metaphysics, consisting as well of the a 
priori perceptions as of the a priori notions. This is the 
positive result of the transcendental aesthetic, and with 
this positive side there is connected, precisely enough, a 



220 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

negative one. Perception, or direct, immediate cognition, 
is possible to ns only through sense, the universal forms 
of which are only space and time. But as these intuitions 
or perceptions of space and time are not (externally) ob- 
jective relations, but only subjective forms, a certain 
subjective element must be held to mingle in all our per- 
ceptions : we perceive not things as they are in them- 
selves, but only as they appear to us through this 
subjectivo- objective medium of space and time. This is 
the sense of the Kantian dictum that we know not things 
in themselves, but only appearances. It were too much 
to assert, however, that all things are in space and time. 
This is so only for us, and in such manner too, that all 
appearances of outer sense are in space as well as in time, 
whereas all appearances of inner sense are only in time. 
Kant by no means intends, however, to convey by this, 
that the world of sense is a mere show. What he main- 
tains, he says, is, transcendentally, the subjective ideality, 
but, empirically nevertheless, the objective reality of 
space and time. Things without us as certainly exist as 
we ourselves, or our own states within us : only they 
exhibit themselves to us not as, independent of space and 
time, they are in themselves. As regards the thing in 
itself that lies behind the appearance of sense, Kant, in the 
first edition of his work, expressed himself as if it were 
possible that it and the ego might be one and the same 
thinking substance. This thought, which Kant only 
threw out as a conjecture, has been the source of the 
whole subsequent evolution of philosophy. That the ego 
is affected, not by an alien thing in itself, but purely by 
its own self, — this became the leading idea of the system 
of Fichte. In his second edition, however, Kant ex- 
punged the conjecture. 

Space and time being discussed, the transcendental 
aesthetic is at an end : it is now ascertained what is a 
priori in sense. But the mind of man is not contented 
with the mere receptivity of sense : it does not merely 
receive objects, but applies to them its own spontaneity, 
embracing them in its intelligible forms, and striving to 
think them by means of its notions (still possibly in & per- 
ceptive reference) . The investigation of these a priori notions 
or forms of thought, 'lying ready in the understandingfrom 
the first,' like the forms of space and time in the sensible 
faculty, is the object of the transcendental analytic (which 
forms the first part of the transcendental logic). 



KANT. 221 

2. The transcendental Analytic. — The first task of the 
analytic will be the discovery of the pure intelligible 
, ' notions. Aristotle has already attempted to construct 
such a table of categories ; but, instead of deriving them 
from a common principle, he has merely empirically 
taken them up as they came to hand : he has committed 
the error also of including space and time among them, 
which, however, are not intelligible, but sensible forms. 
Would we have, then, a complete and systematic table of 
all pure notions, of all the a priori forms of thought, we 
must look about us for a principle. This principle, from 
which the pure notions are to be deduced, is the logical 
judgment. The primitive notions of understanding may 
be completely ascertained, if we will but completely ex- 
amine all the species of judgments. This examination 
Kant accomplishes by means of ordinary logic (which, 
however, is a priori in its nature as well as a demons- 
trated doctrine for thousands of years). In logic there 
are four species of judgments, namely, judgments of 

Quantity. Quality. Relation. Modality. 

Universal, Affirmative, Categorical, Problematic, 

Particular, Negative, Hypothetical, Assertoric, 

Singular. Infinite or Limitative. Disjunctive. Apodictic. 

From these judgments there arises an equal number of 
primitive pure notions, the categories, namely, of 

Quantity. Quality. Relation. Modality. 

Totality, Reality, Substance and Accident, Possibility and 

Impossibility, 
Plurality, Negation, Causality and Dependence, Existence and 

Non-existence, 
Unity. Limitation. Community (reciprocity). Necessity and 

Contingency. 

From these twelve categories, in combination with each 
other (or with the pure modi of sense), all the other pure 
or a priori principles may be derived. The adduced 
categories having demonstrated themselves to be the a 
priori possession of the intellect, these two consequences 
follow : (1.) These notions are a priori, and possess, 
therefore, a necessary and universal validity ; (2.) per se 
they are empty forms, and obtain filling only by percep- 
tions. But as our perception is only a sensuous one, 
these categories have validity only in application to 
sensuous perception, which, for its part, is raised into 
experience proper (perfected perception), only by being 
taken up into the pure notions (and so brought to an ob- 



222 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

jective synthesis). And here we arrive at a second 
question : How does this take place ? How are objects 
(at first mere blind blurs of special sensation, and the 
perceptive forms of general sense), subsumed under the 
empty intelligible forms (and so made, for the first time, 
properly objects) ? 

This subsumption would have no difficulty if objects 
and notions were homogeneous. But they are not so. 
The objects, as coming into the mind through sense, are 
of sensuous nature. The question is, then, How can 
sensible objects be subsumed under intelligible notions ? 
how can the categories be applied to objects ? how can 
principles be assigned in regard to the manner in which 
we have to think (perceive) things in correspondence with 
the categories ? This application cannot be direct, a 
third something must step between, which shall unite in 
itself as it were both natures, which, on one side, then, 
shall be pure, or a priori, and on the other side sensuous. 
But such are the two pure perceptions of the transcen- 
dental aesthetic, such are time and space, especially the 
former, and such are time and space alone. A quality of 
time, such as simultaneousness, is, as a priori, on one side 
homogeneous with the categories ; while on another side, 
inasmuch as all objects can only be perceived in time, it 
is homogeneous with objects. In this reference Kant calls 
the quality of time a transcendental schema, and the use 
to which the mind puts it, he calls the transcendental 
schematism of the pure intellect. The schema is a pro- 
duct of imagination, which spontaneously determines 
inner sense so ; but the schema is not to be confounded 
with the mere image. The latter is always an individual 
perception ; the former, on the contrary, is a universal 
form which imagination produces as picture of a category, 
through which this category itself becomes capable of 
application to the appearance in sense. For this reason 
a schema can exist only in the mind, and can never be 
sensuously perceived. If, looking closer now at this 
schematism of the understanding, we ask for the tran- 
scendental time-quality of each category, the answer is 
this : (1.) The relation of time that constitutes the schema 
of quantity is series in time or number, — a conception that 
consists of the successive addition of like unit to like 
unit. The pure notion of magnitude I cannot otherwise 
conceive than by figuring in imagination a succession of 
units. If I arrest the movement in the very beginning, 



KANT. 223 

I have unity ; if I allow it to continue longer, plurality ; 
and if I allow it to continue without limit, totality. The 
notion of magnitude, then, is applicable to appearances 
of sense only through the scheme of this homogeneous 
succession. (2.) The contents of time constitute the schema 
of quality. If I would apply the pure notiou of reality 
(due to logical quality) to anything sensuous, I conceive 
to myself a filled time, a contained matter of time. Real 
is what fills time. Similarly to conceive the pure notion 
of negation, I figure an empty time. (3.) The categories 
of relation find their schemata in the order of time. For 
if I want to conceive a determinate relation, I call up 
always a determinate order of things in time. Substan- 
tiality appears thus as permanence of reality in time, 
causality as regular sequence in time, reciprocity as 
regular co-existence of the states of one substance with 
the states of another. (4.) The categories of modality 
derive their schemata from connexion with time as a 
whole, that is, from the manner in which an object belongs 
to time. The schema of possibility is agreement with 
the conditions of time in general ; the schema of actual- 
ity is existence in a certain time ; the schema of neces- 
sity is existence in all time. 

We are now, then, equipped with all the appliances 
necessary for the subsumption of sensible appearances 
(phenomena) under intelligible notions, or for the applica- 
tion of the latter to the former, in order to show how, from 
this application, experience, coherent cognitive percep- 
tion, results. We have (1.) the various classes of categories, 
of those a priori notions, namely, which, operative for the 
whole sphere of perception, render possible a synthesis 
of perceptions in a whole of experience. And we have 
(2.) the schemata through which to apply them to the 
objects of sense. With every category and its schema 
there is conjoined a special mode of reducing the objects 
of sense under a universal form of intellect, and, conse- 
quently, of bringing unity into cognition. Or with every 
category there are principles of cognition, a priori rules, 
points of view, to which the objects of sense must be sub- 
jected in order to perfect them into a coherent experience. 
These principles, the most universal synthetic judgments 
regulative of experience, are, in correspondence with the 
four categorical classes, as follows : — (1.) All objects of 
sense are, as only apprehended in time and space, in their 
form magnitudes, quanta, multiples, supplied by the 



224 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

conception of a definite space or a definite time, and conse- 
quently extensive magnitudes or wholes consistent of parts 
successively added. All perception depends on our ima- 
gination apprehending objects of sense as extensive 
magnitudes in time and space. For this reason too, then, 
all perceptions will be in subjection to the a priori laws 
of extensive quantity, to those of geometrical construc- 
tion, for instance, or to that of the infinite divisibility, 
etc. These principles are the axioms of intuition or gene- 
ral perception — laws obligatory on perception as a whole. 
(2.) In reference to reality, all objects of sense are inten- 
sive magnitudes, inasmuch as without a greater or less 
degree of impression on sense, no definite object, nothing 
real, could be at all perceived. This magnitude of reality, 
the object of sensation, is merely intensive, or determin- 
able according to degree, for sensation is not anything 
extended either in space or time. All objects of percep- 
tion are intensive as well as extensive magnitudes, and 
subjected to the general laws of the one not less than to 
those of the other. All the powers and qualities of things, 
accordingly, possess an infinite variety of degrees, which 
may increase or decrease ; anything real has always some 
degree, however small; intensive may be independent of 
extensive magnitude, etc. These principles are the antici- 
pations of sensation, rules which precede all sensation, and 
prescribe its general constitution. (3.) Experience is pos- 
sible only through the conception of a necessary connec- 
tion of perceptions ; without a necessary order of things 
and their mutual relation in time, there cannot be any 
knowledge of a definite system of perceptions, but only 
contingent individual perceptions, (a.) The first principle 
in this connexion is, that amid all the changes of pheno- 
mena, the substance remains the same. Where there is 
nothing permanent, there cannot be any definite relation 
of time, any duration of time ; if in the conditions of a 
thing, I am to assume one certain condition as earlier or 
later, if I am to distinguish these conditions in time, I 
must oppose the thing itself to the conditions it under- 
goes, I must conceive it as persistent throughout all the 
vicissitudes of its own conditions, that is, I must con- 
ceive it as self -identical substance, (b.) The second prin- 
ciple here is, That all mutations obey the law of the 
connexion of cause and effect. The consequence of seve- 
ral conditions in time is only then a fixed and determin- 
ate one, when I assume the one as cause of the other, or 



KANT. 225 

as necessarily preceding it in obedience to a rule or law, 
the other as effect of the former, or as necessarily succeed- 
ing it ; determinate succession in time is only possible 
through the relation of causality ; but without a deter- 
minate succession in time there were no experience ; the 
causal relation consequently is a principle of all empirical 
knowledge ; only this relation it is that produces con- 
nexion in things ; and without this relation we should 
only have incoherent subjective states. (c.) A third 
principle further is, that all co-existent substances are in 
complete reciprocity ; only what acts in community is de- 
termined as inseparably simultaneous. These three prin- 
ciples are the analogies of experience, the rules for cognising 
the relations of things, without which there were for us 
mere piece-meal units, but no whole, no nature of things. 
(4.) The postulates of empirical thought correspond to the 
categories of modality, (a.) What agrees with the for- 
mal conditions of experience is possible, or may exist. 
(b.) What agrees with the material conditions of experi- 
ence is actual, or does exist, (c. ) What is connected with 
actual existence through the universal conditions of ex- 
perience, is necessary, or must exist. These are the only 
possible and authentic synthetic judgments a priori, 
the first lines of all metaphysics. But it is to be rigidly 
understood, that of all these notions and principles we can 
make only an empirical use, or that we can apply them, 
never to things in themselves, but always only to things 
as objects of possible experience. For the notion with- 
out object is an empty form ; an object can be found for 
it again only in perception ; and, lastly, perception, the 
pure perceptions of time and space, can acquire filling 
only through sensation. Without reference to human 
experience, the a 'priori notions and principles, therefore, 
are but a play of the imagination and understanding with 
their own ideas. Their special function is, that by their 
means we are able to spell actual perceptions, and so read 
them as experience. But here we encounter an illusion 
which it is hard to avoid. As, namely, the categories are 
not derived from sense, but have their origin a priori, it 
easily seems as if they might be extended beyond sense 
in their application also. But this idea, as said, is an 
illusion. Of a knowledge of things in themselves, of 
noumena, our notions are not capable, inasmuch as, for 
their filling, perception provides only appearances (phe- 
nomena), and the thing in itself is never present in any 
P 



226 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

possible experience ; our knowledge is restricted to phe- 
nomena alone. To have confounded the world of pheno- 
mena with the world of noumena, this is the source of 
all the perplexities, errors, and contradictions of meta- 
physics hitherto. 

Besides the categories, which in strictness are intended 
only for experience, although, indeed, they have been 
often erroneously applied beyond the bounds of experi- 
ence, there are certain other similar notions which from 
the first are calculated for nothing else than to deceive, 
notions which have the express function to transgress the 
bounds of experience, and which therefore may be named 
transcendent. These are the fundamental notions and 
propositions of former metaphysics. To investigate these 
notions, and to strip from them the false show of objec- 
tive knowledge, this is the business of the second part of 
the transcendental logic, or of the transcendental dialectic. 

3. The transcendental Dialectic. — Reason is distinguished 
from understanding in the more restricted sense. As the 
understanding has its categories, reason has its ideas. 
As the understanding forms axioms from the notions, 
reason from the ideas forms principles in which the 
axioms of the understanding reach their ultimate unity. 
The first principle of reason is, to find for the conditioned 
knowledge of understanding the unconditioned, and so 
complete the unity of knowledge in general. Reason, 
then, is the faculty of the unconditioned, or of principles. 
As it refers, however, not to objects directly, but only 
to understanding, and to the judgments of understand- 
ing concerning objects, its true function is only an imma- 
nent one. Were the ultimate unity of reason understood, 
not merely in a transcendental sense, but assumed as an 
actual object of knowledge, this were, on our part, a 
transcendent use of reason ; we should be applying the 
categories to a knowledge of the unconditioned. In this 
transcendent or false use of the categories originates the 
transcendental show (Schein) which amuses us with the 
illusion of an enlargement of understanding beyond the 
bounds of experience. The detection of this transcenden- 
tal show is the object of the transcendental dialectic. 

The speculative ideas of reason, derived from the three 
forms of the logical syllogism, the categorical, the hypo- 
thetical, and the disjunctive, are themselves threefold : — • 

(1.) The psychological idea, the idea of the soul as a think- 
ing substance (the object of preceding rational psychology). 



KAN1. 227 

2.) The cosmological idea, the idea of the world as 
totality of all phenomena (the object of preceding cosmo- 

T-ie theological idea, the idea of God as ultimate 

[itaan of the possibility of all things (the object of 
preceding rational theology) . 

Through these ideas, in which reason attempts to apply 

: ategories to the unconditioned, it gets only entangled 
in unavoidable show and deception. This transcenden- 
tal show, or this optical illusion of reason, displays itself 
variously in the various ideas. In the psychological 
ideas reason commits a simple paralogism (the paralogisms 
of pare reason) : in the cosmological ideas it is the fate of 
reason to find itself compelled to make contradictory asser- 
tions (the . . : : and in the theological ideas reason 
is occupied with a void ideal (the ideal of pure reason), 

(a.) The psychological idea, or the paralogisms of pure 
reason, — What Kant propounds under this rubric is in- 
tended completely to subvert the traditional rational 
Thi3 doctrine viewed the soul as a psychi- 

I Ling with the attribute of immateriality ; as a simple 
substance with the attribute of indestructibility ; as an 
intellectual, numerically identical substanoe with the pre- 

:e of personality; as an inextended thinking substance 
with the predicate of immortality. All these statements 
are, according to Kant, subreptions, petitiones principii. 

-- are derived one and all of them from the simple ' I 
think : ' but the * I think ' is neither perception nor notion ; 
it is a mere consciousness, an act of the mind which attends, 
unites, supports all perceptions and notions. This act of 
thought now is falsely converted into a thing ; for the 
ego as subject, the existence of an ego as object, as soul, 
is substituted ; and what applies to the former analyti- 
cally is transferred to the latter synthetically. To be 
able to treat the ego as an object and apply categories in 
its regard, it would have required to have been empiri- 
cally given in a perception, which is impossible. From 
it follows, too, that the arguments for the immor- 
tality rest on sophisms. I can certainly ideally separate 
my thought from my body, but it by no means follows 
on that account that my thought, if really separated from 
the body, would continue. The result that Kant claims 
j of rational psychology is this : There is 
no rational psychology as a doctrine which might pro- 
ton us an addition to the knowledge of ourselves, bet 



228 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

only as a discipline which sets insurmountable bounds to 
speculative reason in this field, in order, on the one hand, 
that we may not throw ourselves into the lap of a soul* 
less materialism, and on the other hand that we may not 
lose ourselves in the fanaticism of a spiritualism that is 
inapplicable to life. We may view this discipline, too, 
as admonishing us to regard the refusal of reason per- 
fectly to satisfy the curious in reference to questions that 
transcend this life as a hint of reason's own to withdraw our 
attempts at knowledge from fruitless extravagant specu- 
lation, and apply them to the all-fruitful practical field. 

(b.) The antinomies of cosmology. — For a complete list 
of the cosmological ideas, we require the cue of the cate- 
gories. In (1.) a quantitative reference to the world, 
time and space being the original quanta of all percep- 
tion, it were necessary to determine something in regard 
to their totality. (2.) As regards quality, some conclu- 
sion were required in reference to the divisibility of mat- 
ter. (3. ) On the question of relation, we must endeavour 
to find for all the effects in the world the complete series 
of their causes. (4.) As for modality, it were necessary 
to understand the contingent in its conditions, or, in other 
words, the absolute system of the dependency of the con- 
tingent in the phenomenal world. Reason, now, in at- 
tempting a determination of these problems, finds itself 
involved in contradiction with its own self. On each of 
the four points contradictory conclusions may be proved 
with equal validity. As (1.) the thesis : The world has a 
beginning in time and limits in space ; and the antithe- 
sis : The world has neither beginning in time nor limits 
in space. (2.) The thesis: Every compound consists of 
simples, nor does there exist in the world anything else 
than simples and their compounds ; and the antithesis : 
No compound consists of simples, nor does there exist in the 
world anything that is simple. (3.) The thesis : Causality 
according to the laws of nature is not the only one from 
which the phenomena of the world may be collectively 
derived, there is required for their explanation a caus- 
ality of free-will as well ; and the antithesis : Free-will 
there is none, all happens in the world solely by law of 
nature. Lastly, (4.) the thesis : There is something in 
the world, which, either as its part or as its cause, is an 
absolutely necessary being ; and the antithesis : Neither 
within the world nor without the world does there exist 
any absolutely necessary being as its cause. This dia- 



KANT. 229 

lectical conflict of the cosmological ideas demonstrates its 
own nullity. 

(c.) The ideal of pure reason or the idea of God. — 
Kant shows first of all how reason attains to the 
idea of an all-perfect being, and then directs himself 
against the attempt of former metaphysicians to prove the 
existence of this all-perfect being. His critique of the 
traditional arguments for the existence of God is essen- 
tially as follows : — (1.) The ontological proof reasons thus : 
There is possible a being the most real of all. But in all 
reality, existence is necessarily included ; if I deny this 
existence, then, I deny the possibility of a being the most 
real of all, which is self -contradictory. But, rejoins 
Kant, existence is nowise a reality, or a real predicate, 
that can be added to the notion of a thing ; existence is 
the position of a thing with all its qualities. But the 
suppression of existence suppresses not one single signifi- 
cate of a notion. Though, then, it possess every one of 
its significates, it does not on that account possess exist- 
ence also. Existence is nothing but the logical copula, 
and nowise enriches the (logical) comprehension of the 
subject. A hundred actual crowns, for example, contain 
no more than a hundred possible ones : only for my 
means are the cases different. A being the most real of 
all may, consequently, be quite correctly thought as the 
most real of all, even when also thought as only possible, 
and not as actual. It was therefore something quite un- 
natural, and a mere revival of school-wit, to propose to 
dig out of an arbitrary idea the existence of its corre- 
spondent object. All the pains and trouble, then, of this 
famous argument are only lost ; and a man is no more 
likely to be made, by mere ideas, richer in knowledge, 
than a merchant in means by the addition to his balance 
of a few ciphers. While the ontological proof reasoned 
to necessary existence, (2.) the cosmological proof takes 
its departure from necessary existence. If anything 
exists, there must exist an absolutely necessary being as 
its cause. But I myself at all events exist, therefore 
there exists also an absolutely necessary being as my 
cause. This proof, so far, is now criticised by reference 
to the last of the cosmological antinomies. The conclu- 
sion perpetrates the error of inferring from the pheno- 
menal contingent a necessary being in excess of experience. 
But were this inference even allowed, it implies no God. 
It is reasoned further, then, that it is possible only for 



230 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

that being to be absolutely necessary who is the sum of 
all reality. But if we invert this proposition and say, 
that being who is the sum of all reality is absolutely ne- 
cessary, we are back in the ontological proof, with which, 
then, the cosmological must fall also. The cosmological 
proof resorts to the stratagem of producing an old argu- 
ment in a new dress, in order to have the appearance of 
appealing to two witnesses. (3.) But if, in this way, 
neither notion nor experience is adequate to prove the 
existence of God, there is still left a third expedient, to 
begin, namely, with a specific experience and so deter- 
mine whether it may not be possible to conclude from 
the frame and order of the world to the existence of a 
supreme being. This is the object of the physico- 
theological proof, which, taking its departure from the 
existence of design in nature, proceeds, in its main 
moments, thus : everywhere there is design ; design in 
itself is extrinsic or contingent as regards the things of 
this world ; there exists by necessity, therefore, a wise 
and intelligent cause of this design ; this necessary cause 
is necessarily also the most real being of all beings : the 
most real being of all beings has consequently necessary 
existence. Kant answers, the physico-theological proof 
is the oldest, the clearest, and the fittest for common 
sense ; but it is not apodictic. It infers from the form 
of the world a cause proportioned to the form. But even 
so we have only an originator of the form of the world, 
only an architect of the world : we have no originator 
of matter, we have no author and creator of the universe. 
In this strait a shift is made to the cosmological argu- 
ment again, and the originator of the form is conceived 
as the necessary being whom things imply. We have 
thus an absolute being whose perfection corresponds to 
the perfection of the universe. In the universe, how- 
ever, there is no absolute perfection ; we have thus, then, 
only a very perfect being ; and for a most perfect being 
we must have recourse once more to the ontological 
argument. The teleplogical argument, then, implies the 
cosmological ; the cosmological the ontological ; and out 
of this circle the metaphysical demonstration is unable 
to escape. The ideal of a supreme being, accordingly, 
is nothing else than a regulative principle of reason which 
leads us to view all connexion in the world, as if it were 
due to an all-sufficient necessary cause, as source of unity 
and foundation of the rule of explanation : in which case, 



KAXT. 231 

indeed, it is unavoidable that in consequence of a tran- 
scendental subreption, we should mistake a merely for- 
mal principle for a constitutive one, and hypostasize it 
withal into a creative absolute intelligence. In truth, 
however, a supreme being constitutes, so far as the specu- 
lative exercise of reason is concerned, a mere but fault- 
less ideal, a notion which is the close and the crown of 
human knowledge, but whose objective reality, never- 
theless, cau, with apodictic certainty, neither be proved 
nor refuted. 

The preceding critique of the ideas of reason leaves 
one more question to answer. If these ideas are without 
an objective value, why do they exist in us? Being 
necessary, they will possess, of course, their own good 
reason. And this good reason has just been pointed out 
on occasion of the theological idea. Though not consti- 
tutive, they are regulative principles. In arranging our 
mental faculties, we never succeed better than when we 
proceed ' as if ' there were a soul. The cosmological idea 
gives us a hint to regard the world ' as if ' the series of 
causes were infinite, without exclusion however of an in- 
telligent cause. The theological idea enables us to con- 
sider the entire world-complex under the point of view 
of an organized unity. In this way, then, these ideas, if 
not constitutive principles to extend our knowledge be- 
yond the bounds of experience, are regulative principles 
to arrange experience and reduce it under certain hypo- 
thetical unities. If they compose not an organon for fche 
discovery of truth, they still constitute — the whole three 
of them, psychological, cosmological and theological — a 
canon for the simplification and systematization of our 
collective experiences. 

Besides their regulative import, the ideas possess also 
a practical one. There is a species of certainty, which, 
though not objectively, but only subjectively competent. 
is pre-eminently of a practical nature, and is called belief 
or conviction. If the liberty of the will, the immortality 
of the soul, and the existence of God^ are three cardinal 
tenets, such that, though not necessary for knowledge, 
they are still urgently pressed on us by reason, then 
without doubt they will have their own value in the 
practical sphere as regards moral conviction. This con- 
viction is not logical but moral certainty. As it rests, 
then, entirely on subjective grounds of the moral feeling, 
1 cannot say, It is morally certain, but only. I am morally 



232 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

certain that there is a God, etc. That is to say, belief in 
God and another world is so interwoven with my moral 
feeling, that, as little as I run risk of losing this latter, 
so little am I apprehensive of being deprived of the for- 
mer. With this we are already within the sphere of 
practical reason. 

II. — The Krittk of Practical Reason. 

With the Kritik of Practical Reason we enter an entirely 
different world, in which reason is amply to recover all 
that has been lost in the theoretical sphere. The problem 
now is essentially, almost diametrically, different from the 
problem then. The speculative Kritik had to examine 
whether pure reason is adequate to an a priori knowledge 
of objects : the object of the practical Kritik is to exa- 
mine whether pure reason is capable of an a priori deter- 
mination of the will in reference to objects. The question 
of the former concerned the a priori cognisableness of 
objects : that of the latter concerns, not the cognisableness 
of objects, but the motives of the will, and all that is 
capable of being known in the same connexion. All 
therefore, in the Kritik of Practical Reason presents itself 
in an order precisely the reverse of the Kritik of Pure 
Reason. The primitive determinants of cognition are 
perceptions ; those of volition are principles and notions. [ 
The Kritik of Practical Reason must begin, therefore, with 
the moral principles, and, only after their establishment, 
proceed to any question of the relation of practical reason 
to sense. The results, too, of these two Kritiken are 
opposed the one to the other. If in the theoretical 
sphere, because reason that sought the thing in itself be- 
came transcendent (perceptionless), the ideas remained 
only on the whole negative, the contrary is now the case 
in the practical sphere. In this sphere the ideas demon- 
strate themselves true and certain, in a manner direct 
and immanent, without once quitting the limits of self- 
consciousness and inner experience. The question here 
is of the relation of reason, not to outer things, but to an 
internal element, the will. And the result is, that reason 
is found to be capable of influencing the will purely from 
its own self, and hence now the ideas of free-will, immor- 
tality, and God, recover the certainty which theoretical 
reason had been unable to preserve to them. 

That there is a determination of the will by pure rea- 



KANT. 233 

son, or that reason has practical reality, this is not imme- 
diately certain, inasmuch as the actions of men appear 
conditioned, in the first instance, by the sensuous motives 
of pleasure and pain, of passion and inclination. The 
Kritik of Practical Reason will require to examine, then, 
whether these determinants of will are actually the only 
ones, or whether there is not also a higher active faculty 
in which not sense, but reason, gives law, and where 
will follows not mere incentives from without, but obeys 
in pure freedom a higher practical principle from within. 
The demonstration of all this belongs to the analytic of 
practical reason, while to the dialectic of practical reason 
it belongs to consider and bring to resolution the anti- 
nomies which result from the relation between the prac- 
tical authority of pure reason, and that of the empirical 
instigations of sense. 

1. Analytic. — The reality of a higher active faculty 
in us, is made certain by the fact of the moral law, 
which is nothing else than a law spontaneously imposed 
on the will by reason itself. The moral law stands high 
above the lower active faculty in us, and, with an in- 
ward irresistible necessity, orders us, in independence of 
every instigation of sense, to follow it absolutely and un- 
conditionally. All other practical laws relate solely to 
the empirical ends of pleasure and happiness ; but the 
moral law pays no respect to these, and demands that 
we also shall pay them none. The moral law is no hypo- 
thetical imperative that issues only prescripts of profit 
for empirical ends ; it is a categorical imperative, a law, 
universal and binding on every rational will. It can de- 
rive consequently only from reason, not from animal 
will, and not from individual self-will ; only from pure 
reason, too, and not from reason empirically conditioned : 
it can only be a commandment of the autonomous, one, 
and universal reason. In the moral law, therefore, 
reason demonstrates itself as practical, reason has direct 
reality in it. The moral law it is that shows pure 
reason to be no mere idea, but a power actually deter- 
minative of will and action. This law it is, also, that 
procures perfect certainty and truth for another idea, the 
idea of free-will. The moral law says, * Thou canst, for 
thou shouldst,' and assures us thus of our own freedom, 
as indeed it is, in its own nature, nothing but the will 
itself, the will in freedom from all sensuous matter of 
desire, and constituting therefore our very highest law 



234 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

of action. But now there is the closer question, What> 
then, is it that practical reason categorically commands ? 
For an answer to this question we must first consider the 
empirical will, the natural side of mankind. 

Empirical will consists in the act of volition being 
directed to an object in consequence of a pleasure felt in 
it by the subject ; and this pleasure again roots in the 
nature of the subject, in the susceptibility for this or that, 
in natural desires, etc. Under this empirical will must be 
ranked all appetition for any precise object, or all mate- 
rial volition ; for nothing can be an object of subjective 
will unless there exist a natural sensibility in conse- 
quence of which the object is not indifferent, but suggests 
pleasure to the subject. All material motives of will 
come under the principle of agreeableness or felicity, or, 
in the subject, of self-love. The will, so far as it follow? 
such, is dependent on, and determined by, empirical 
natural ends, and is, consequently, not autonomous, but 
heteronomous. But from this it follows that any law of 
reason unconditionally obligatory on all rational beings, 
must be totally distinct from all material principles, must 
contain, indeed, nothing material whatever. Material 
principles are of empirical, contingent, variable nature. 
For men are not at one about pleasure and pain, what is 
pleasant to one being unpleasant to another ; and even 
were they at one in this respect, the agreement would only 
be contingent. Material motives, consequently, are not 
capable, like laws, of being considered binding on every 
one ; every single subject is at liberty to select other 
motives. Subjective rules of action are named by Kant 
maxims of volition, and he censures those moralists who 
set up such maxims as universal moral principles. 

Maxims, nevertheless, though not the supreme prin- 
ciple of morality, are yet necessary to the autonomy of 
the will, as without them there were no definite object 
of action. Only union of the two sides, then, can con- 
duct us to a true principle of morals. To that end the 
maxims must be relieved of their limitation, and enlarged 
into the form of universal laws of reason. Only those 
maxims must be adopted as motives which are suscep- 
tible ^f being made universal laws of reason. The supreme 
principle of morals is consequently this : act so that the 
maxim of you* vdli may be capable of being regarded as 
a principle of universal validity, or so that from the 
thought of your maxim as a law universally obeyed, no 



KANT. 235 

contradiction results. All material moral principles, as 
only of empirical, sensuous, heteronomous nature, are ex- 
cluded by this formal moral principle : in it there is a 
law provided that raises the will above the lower motives, 
a law that reduces all wills to unanimity, a law that, 
binding on all rational beings, is consequently the one 
true law of reason itself. 

A further question now is, what induces the will to act 
according to this supreme law of reason ? The answer of 
Kant is, that the only spring of human will must be the 
moral law itself, or respect for it. An action in accord- 
ance with the law, but only for the sake of felicity or 
sensuous inclination, and not purely for the sake of the 
law itself, gives rise to mere legality, not to morality. 
The inclinations of sense, taken collectively, are self-love 
and self-conceit. The former is restricted by the moral 
law, the latter completely quashed. Whatever quells 
our self-conceit, however, whatever humbles us, must 
appear to us extremely estimable. Such being the action 
of the moral law, then, respect will be the positive feel- 
ing entertained by us in regard of the moral law. This 
respect is indeed a feeling, but it is no feeling of mere 
sense, no pathological feeling ; on the contrary, it is an 
intellectual feeling produced by consciousness of the prac- 
tical law of reason, and is directly opposed to the other. 
This respect again is, on one side, as subjection to law, 
pain, but on the other side, as the subjection is that of 
our own reason, pleasure. Respect, awe, is the only 
feeling which beseems man in presence of the moral law. 
Natural love to it is not to be expected from men who, 
as sensuous beings, are subjected to many passions which 
resist the law : love to the law, then, can only be re- 
garded as a mere ideal. The moral purism of Kant — that 
is, his anxiety to purge the motives of action from all the 
greeds of sense — ends thus in rigorism, or the gloomy 
view that duty can only be reluctantly performed. It is 
this exaggeration that is pointed to in a well-known 
Xenium of Schiller's. The following scruple of conscience, 
namely, 

1 Willing serve I my friends all, but do it, alas, with affection ; 
And so gnaws me my heart, that I'm not virtuous yet — 

Schiller answers thus, 

1 Help, except this, there is none : you must strive with might to 

contemn them, 
And with horror perform then what the law may enjoin.' 



236 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

2. Dialectic. — Pure reason must always have its dia- 
lectic, for it lies in its nature to demand the uncondi- 
tioned for the given conditioned. Thus, too, then, 
practical reason demands for the conditioned goods 
which influence the action of man, an unconditioned 
supreme good. What is this summum bonum ? If the 
ultimate good, the fundamental condition of all other 
goods be understood by it, then it is virtue. But virtue 
is no completed good, for finite rational beings require, 
as sentient, felicity. The greatest good is then only 
complete, therefore, when the greatest felicity is united 
with the greatest virtue. How now are these two 
moments of the greatest good mutually related? Are 
they analytically or synthetically combined ? The for- 
mer was the opinion of the greater number of the ancient, 
especially Greek, moral philosophers. They either re- 
garded felicity, like the Stoics, as accidental moment in 
virtue, or virtue, like the Epicureans, as accidental 
moment in felicity. Felicity, said the Stoics, is the con- 
sciousness of virtue ; virtue, said the Epicureans, is the 
consciousness of the maxim that leads to felicity. But, 
says Kant, an analytic union is impossible in the case of 
two such heterogeneous notions. A synthetic union, con- 
sequently, can alone take place between them, a causal 
union, namely, in such manner that the one is cause and 
the other effect. Practical reason must regard such a 
relation as its greatest good, and must propose the thesis, 
therefore : virtue and felicity are to be correspondently 
connected as cause and effect. But this thesis founders 
at once on actual fact. Neither of them is the direct 
cause of the other. Neither is the desire of felicity 
motive to virtue, nor is virtue the efficient cause of feli- 
city. Hence the antithesis : virtue and felicity are not 
necessarily correspondent, and are not mutually related 
as cause and effect. Kant finds the solution of this anti- 
nomy in the distinction between the sensible and the 
intelligible world. In the world of sense virtue and feli- 
city are certainly not correspondent ; but rational beings, 
noumenally, are citizens of a supersensuous world where 
conflict between virtue and felicity does not exist. Here 
felicity is always adequate to virtue ; and with his trans- 
lation into the supersensuous world man may expect as 
well the realization of the supreme good. But, as ob- 
served, the supreme good has two constituents ; (1.) 
supreme virtue, and (2.) supreme felicity. The necessary 



KANT. 237 

realization of the first moment postulates the immortality 
of the soul, that of the second the existence of God. 

(1.) For the supreme good, there is required in the 
first place perfected virtue, holiness. But now no sensuous 
being can be holy. A being composed of reason and 
sense is only capable of approaching in an infinite series 
nearer to holiness as to an ideal. But such infinite pro- 
gress is only possible in an infiuite duration of personal 
existence. If then the supreme good is to be realized, 
the soul's immortality must be presupposed. 

(2.) For the supreme good there is required, in the 
second place, perfected felicity. Felicity is the condition 
of a rational being in the world, for whom everything 
happens according to his wish and his will. But this can 
only be realized when entire nature agrees with his ob- 
jects, and this is not the case. As active beings we are 
not causes of nature, and the moral law affords no 
ground for a connexion of morality and felicity. Still 
we ought to, or we are to endeavour to promote the 
supreme good. It must be possible therefore. The 
necessary union of these two moments is consequently 
postulated, that is to say, the existence of a cause of 
nature distinct from nature, and which will constitute 
the ground of this union. A being must exist, as com- 
mon cause of the natural and the moral world ; such a 
being withal as knows our minds, an intelligence, and, 
according to this intelligence, distributes to us felicity. 
Such a being is God. 

Thus from practical reason there flow the idea of im- 
mortality and the idea of God, as previously the idea of 
free-will. The idea of free-will derived its reality from 
the possibility of the moral law ; the idea of immortality 
derives its reality from the possibility of perfected virtue, 
and that of God from the necessity of perfected felicity. 
These three ideas, therefore, which to speculative reason 
were insoluble problems, have acquired now, in the field 
of practical reason, a firmer basis. Nevertheless, they 
are not even now theoretical dogmas, but, as Kant names 
them, practical postulates, necessary presuppositions of 
moral action. My theoretical knowledge is not extended 
by them : I know now only that there are objects corre- 
spondent to these ideas, but of these objects I know no- 
thing more. Of God, for example, we possess and we know 
no more than this idea itself. Should we construct a 
theory of the supersensuous founded on categories alone, 



23$ HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

we should only convert theology into a magic lantern oi 
chimeras. Practical reason, nevertheless, has still pro- 
cured us certainty as regards the objective reality of 
these ideas which theoretical reason was obliged to leave 
in abeyance, and so far therefore the former has the ad- 
vantage. This respective position of the two faculties has 
been wisely calculated in reference to the nature and 
destiny of man. For the ideas of God and immortality 
remaining dubious and dark theoretically, introduce not 
any impurity into our moral principles through fear or 
hope, but leave free scope for awe of the law. 

So far the Kantian critique of practical reason. By 
way of appendix we may here give a summary of Kant's 
religious views as expressed in his work, Religion within 
the Limits of Pure Reason. The fundamental thought of 
this work is the reduction of religion to morals. Between 
morals and religion there may exist a double relation : 
either the former founds on the latter, or the latter on 
the former. In the first case, however, fear and hope 
would become the motives of moral action : there re- 
mains for us, then, only the second way. Morality leads 
necessarily to religion, for the supreme good is neces- 
sarily the ideal of reason, and is capable of being realized 
only by God ; but religion must not by any means alone 
impel us to virtue, for the idea of God ought never to 
become a mere moral motive. B-eligion is to Kant the 
recognition of all our duties as commandments of God. 
It is revealed religion when through it I must first of all 
know that something is a commandment of God before I 
can also know that it is my duty : it is natural religion 
when I must first of all know that something is a duty 
before I can know that it is a commandment of God. A 
church is an ethical community which has for object the 
fulfilment and the greatest possible realization of the 
moral prescripts, — an association of such as with united 
efforts will resist sin and advance morality. The church, 
so far as it is not an object of possible experience, is the 
invisible church : it is then a mere idea of the union of 
all good men under the moral government of God. The 
visible church, again, is that church which represents the 
kingdom of God on earth, so far as that is possible by man. 
The requisites, and consequently the criteria of the true 
visible church (which dispose themselves according to 
the table of the categories, because this church is one 
given in experience), are as follows : (a.) With reference 



KANT. 239 

to quantity, the church must possess totality or univer* 
sality, and, though divided indeed into contingent 
opinions, must still be established on such principles as 
necessarily unite all these opinions in a single church. 
(b.) The quality of the true visible church is purity, 
as it is animated only by moral motives at the same 
time that it is purified as well from the fatuousness 
of superstition as from the mania of fanaticism. (c.) 
The relation of the members of the church reciprocally 
rests on the principle of liberty. The church is a free 
state, therefore ; neither a hierarchy nor a democracy, 
but a free, universal, permanent spiritual union, (d.) In 
modality, the church aims at immutability of constitu- 
tion. The laws themselves must not be changed, though 
the right of modification be reserved for more contingent 
arrangements that concern administration alone. What 
alone is able to constitute the foundation of a universal 
church is moral, rational belief, for only such belief is 
capable of being communicated to every one with con- 
viction. But in consequence of the peculiar weakness of 
human nature, this pure belief can never be counted on 
as the sole foundation of a church ; for it is not easy to 
convince mankind that striving to virtue, a good life, is 
all that is required by God : they suppose always that 
they must render to God a particular traditional worship, 
in regard to which all the merit depends on the render- 
ing of it. For the establishment of a church, therefore, 
there is still necessary an historical and statutory belief 
that is founded on certain facts. This is the so-called 
creed. In every church, then, there are two elements, 
the pure moral, rational belief, and the historico-statu- 
tory creed. On the relation of these two elements it 
depends, whether a church shall possess worth or not. 
The statutory is in function always only the vehicle of 
the moral element. Whenever the statutory element 
becomes an independent object, claims an independent 
authority, the church sinks into corruption and unreason ; 
whenever the church assumes the pure belief of reason it 
is in the way to the kingdom of God. This is the distinc- 
tion between true worship and false worship, religion and 
priestcraft. The dogma has value only so far as it has a 
moral core. Without this moral belief the apostle Paul 
himself would have hardly put faith in the legends of the 
creed. The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, con- 
tains, in the letter, absolutely nothing for practice. 



240 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

Whether three or ten persons are to be worshipped in the 
Godhead, is indifferent, inasmuch as no difference of rule 
results thence for the conduct of life. Even the Bible 
and the interpretation of the Bible are to be placed 
under the moral point of view. The revealed documents 
must be interpreted in accordance with the universal 
rules of rational religion. Reason is in matters of reli- 
gion the supreme interpreter of Scripture. Such inter- 
pretation may in reference to the text often appear forced : 
nevertheless it must be preferred to such a literal inter- 
pretation as yields nothing for morality, or is directly 
opposed to ethical principles. The possibility of such 
moral interpretation, without distortion of the literal 
sense, lies in the fact of the instinct to moral religion 
having been always present in the reason of man. The 
representations of the Bible have only to be divested of 
their mystical husk (and Kant has given examples 
of this in his moral interpretations of the most impor- 
tant dogmas) in order to obtain a universal rational 
sense. The historical element of the sacred writ- 
ings is in itself indifferent. The riper reason becomes, 
the more it is capable of being satisfied with the exclu- 
sive moral interpretation, the less indispensable become 
the statutory dogmas of the creed. The transition of the 
creed into a purely rational faith, is the coming of the 
kingdom of God, towards which, however, we can draw 
near only in an infinite progress. The actual realization 
of the kingdom of God is the end of the world, the close 
of history. 

III. — The Kritik of Judgment. 

Kant sketches the notion of this science as follows. 
The two mental faculties which have been hitherto con- 
sidered, are those of cognition and volition. As regards 
the former (cognition), that only understanding is pos- 
sessed of constitutive a priori principles, was proved in 
the Kritik of Pure Reason. As regards the latter (voli- 
tion), that only reason is possessed of constitutive a 
priori principles, was proved in the Kritik of Practical 
Reason. Whether judgment now, as middle-term be- 
tween understanding and reason, supplies its object, the 
emotion of pleasure and pain, as middle-term between 
cognition and volition, with constitutive (not merely regu- 
lative) a priori principles of its own, — this is what the 



KANT. 241 

Kritik of Judgment has to determine. This faculty, 
judgment, is by virtue of its peculiar function a middle- 
term between understanding (simple apprehension) as 
faculty of notions, and reason (reasoning) as faculty of 
principles (syllogistic premises). Theoretical reason ha3 
taught us to comprehend the world only according to laws 
of nature : practical reason has disclosed to us a moral 
world in which all is under the control of liberty. There 
were, then, an insurmountable cleft between the kingdom 
of nature and the kingdom of liberty (free-will), should 
judgment prove unable to replace this cleft by the notion 
of a common ground of unity for both. The warrant of 
such expectation lies in the notion of judgment itself. 
The function of this faculty being to think the particular 
as contained under a universal, it will naturally refer the 
empirical plurality of nature to a supersensual transcen- 
dental principle as ground of unity to this plurality. 
This principle, as object of judgment, will, therefore, be 
the notion of design in nature, for design is nothing else 
than this supersensual unity which constitutes the reason 
of the reality of objects. Then all design, all realization 
of a proposed end, being attended with satisfaction, it 
will be easily understood why judgment has been said to 
contain the laws for the emotion of satisfaction and dis- 
satisfaction. 

Adaptation in nature, however, may be either subjec- 
tively or objectively conceived. In the first case, I ex- 
perience pleasure or pain directly on the presentation of 
an object, and before I have formed any notion of it. 
An emotion of this nature can be referred only to a har- 
monious relation subsisting between the form of the 
object and the faculty that perceives it. Judgment in 
this subjective aspect is aesthetic judgment. In the second 
case I form first of all a notion of the object, and then 
decide whether the object corresponds to this notion. 
That my perception should find a flower beautiful, it is 
not necessary that I should have formed beforehand a 
notion of this flower. But to find contrivance in the 
flower, to that a notion is necessary. Judgment as the 
faculty cognisant of objective adaptation is named teleo- 
logical judgment. 

1. Critique of cesihetic judgment. — (a.) Analytic. — The 
analytic of aesthetic judgment is divided into two prin- 
cipal parts, the analytic of the beautiful and the analytic 
of the sublime. 



242 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

To discover on what the naming of an object beautiful 
depends, we must analyse the judgments of Taste as the 
faculty that is cognisant of the beautiful. (1.) In 
quality the beautiful is the object of a satisfaction that is 
wholly disinterested. This disinterestedness distinguishes 
the satisfaction of the beautiful as well from that of the 
agreeable as from that of the good. In the agreeable and 
in the good also, I am interested. In the case of the 
agreeable my satisfaction is accompanied by a feeling of 
desire. My satisfaction in the good is at the same time 
motive to my will for the realization of it. Only in the 
case of the beautiful is my satisfaction free from interest- 
edness. (2.) In quantity the beautiful gives a universal 
satisfaction. As regards the agreeable every one is con- 
vinced that his pleasure in it is only a personal one ; but 
whoever says, This picture is beautiful, expects every one 
else to find it so. Nevertheless, this decision of taste 
does not arise from notions ; its universality, there- 
fore, is merely subjective. My judgment is not that all 
objects of a class are beautiful, but that a certain parti- 
cular object will appear beautiful to all beholders. The 
judgments of taste are singular judgments. (3.) As re- 
gards relation the beautiful is that in which we find the 
form of adaptation without conceiving at the same time 
any particular end of this adaptation. (4.) In modality, 
the beautiful is, without notion, object of a necessary satis- 
faction. Every consciousness may be at least conceived 
as capable of causing pleasure. The agreeable actually 
does cause pleasure. But the beautiful must cause plea- 
sure. The necessity of the aesthetic judgment, then, is a 
necessity of the agreement of all in a judgment which is 
regarded as example of a universal rule, which rule again 
it is impossible to assign. The subjective principle which 
underlies the judgments of taste, therefore, is a sensus 
communis that determines only by feelings and not by 
notions what should please or displease. 

Sublime is what is absolutely or beyond all comparison 
great, — that compared with which all else is small. 
But there is nothing in nature that may not be surpassed 
by yet a greater. The infinite alone is absolutely great, 
and the infinite is only to be found in ourselves as idea. 
The sublime is not properly in nature, then, but is only 
reflected from the mind to nature. We call that sublime 
in nature which awakens in us the idea of the infinite. 
As with the beautiful, it is principally quality that is in 



KANT. 243 

question, so with the sublime it is principally quantity ; 
and this quantity is either magnitude of extension (the 
mathematical sublime) or magnitude of power (the dyna- 
mical sublime). In the sublime the satisfaction concerns 
formlessness rather than form. The sublime excites a 
powerful mental emotion, and gives pleasure only through 
pain, or by occasioning a momentary feeling of obstructed 
vitality. The satisfaction of the sublime, then, is not so 
much positive pleasure, as rather wonder and awe, — what 
may be called negative pleasure. The moments of the 
aesthetic appreciation of the sublime are the same as in 
that of the beautiful. (1.) In quantitative reference that 
is sublime which is absolutely great, and in comparison 
with which all else is small. The aesthetic estimation of 
magnitude, however, does not lie in number but in the 
mere perception of the subject. The magnitude of a 
natural object, in the comprehension of which imagina- 
tion vainly exerts its entire faculty, infers a supersensual 
substrate great beyond all measure of sense, and with 
which properly the feeling of the sublime is connected. 
It is not the object, the raging sea, for example, that is 
sublime, but rather the mental emotion of him who 
contemplates it. (2.) As regards quality, the sublime 
creates not pleasure like the beautiful, but rather in 
the first instance pain, and only through pain pleasure. 
The feeling of the inadequacy of imagination in the 
aesthetic estimation of magnitude produces pain ; but 
again the consciousness of our independent reason in its 
superiority to imagination produces pleasure. Sublime, 
then, in this respect is that which in its opposition to 
the interest of the senses directly pleases. (3.) As con- 
cerns relation, the sublime causes nature to appear as a 
power in relation to which we possess nevertheless a 
consciousness of our superiority. (4.) As for modality, 
our judgments in reference to the sublime are as neces- 
sarily valid as those in reference to the beautiful — with 
this difference only, that the former are accepted by others 
with greater difficulty than the latter, because for our 
sense of the sublime culture and developed moral ideas 
are necessary. 

(b.) Dialectic. — A dialectic of aesthetic judgment is pos- 
sible, like every other dialectic, only where there are 
judgments that pretend to an a priori universality. For 
dialectic consists in the contrariety of such judgments. 
The antinomy of the principles of taste depends on the 



244 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

two opposed moments of the relative judgment, that it 
is purely subjective, and yet claims universality. Hence 
the two commonplaces : In matters of taste there can be no 
dispute ; and, Tastes differ. This gives rise to the follow- 
ing antinomy, (1.) Thesis : The judgment of taste is 
not founded on notions, otherwise dispute were possible 
(proofs might be led). (2.) Antithesis : The judgment of 
taste is founded on notions, otherwise, despite its diver- 
sity, dispute were impossible. This antinomy, says 
Kant, is only an apparent one, and disappears as soon as 
the two propositions are more precisely understood. The 
thesis, namely, should run so : The judgment of taste is 
not founded on definite notions, or, it is not susceptible 
of strict proof ; the antithesis again so : The judgment of 
taste is founded on a notion ; but an indefinite notion, 
that, namely, of a supersensual substrate of the pheno- 
mena. In this construction there is no longer any con- 
tradiction between the two propositions. 

Now, at the close of the inquiry, an answer is possible 
for the question : does the adaptation of things to our 
judgment of them (their beauty and sublimity), lie in us 
or in them ? Esthetic realism assumes that the supreme 
cause of nature has willed the existence of things which 
should appear to imagination as beautiful and sublime. 
The organized forms are the principal witnesses for this 
view. But, again, even in its merely mechanical forms, 
nature seems to testify such a tendency to beauty, that 
it is possible to believe in a mere mechanical production 
even for those more perfect forms as well, and the adap- 
tation, consequently, would lie, not in nature, but in us. 
This is the position of idealism, and renders possible an 
explanation of the capacity to pronounce a priori on the 
beautiful and the sublime. The highest mode of view- 
ing the aesthetic element, however, is to regard it as a 
symbol of the moral good. And thus, in the end, taste, 
like religion, is placed by Kant as a corollary to morals. 

2. Critique of teleological judgment. — In the preced- 
ing, the subjectively aesthetic adaptation of the objects 
of nature has been considered. But these objects stand 
to each other also in a relation of adaptation. This ob- 
jective adaptation is now to be the consideration of teleo- 
logical judgment. 

(a.) Analytic of teleological judgment. — This analytic 
has to determine the kinds of objective (material) adap- 
tation. These are two : an external, and an internal 



KANT. 245 

External adaptation, as it designates merely the utility 
of one thing for another, is only something relative. The 
sand, for example, deposited on the sea-shore is good for 
pine-trees. For animals to live on the earth, the latter 
must produce the necessary nourishment, etc. These 
examples of external adaptation show that the means in 
such a case possess not adaptation in themselves, but 
only contingently. The sand is not understood in conse- 
quence of it being said that it is means for pine-trees : it 
is intelligible per se quite apart from any notion of use. 
The earth produces not food because men must neces- 
sarily live on the earth. In short, this external or rela- 
tive adaptation is to be understood by a reference to the 
mechanism of nature alone. Not so the internal adap- 
tation, which exhibits itself principally in the organic 
products of nature. These are so constituted that each 
of their parts is end, and each also instrument or means. 
In the generative process the product of nature generates 
itself as a genus ; in the process of growth the product 
of nature produces itself as an individual ; in the pro- 
cess of formation each part of the individual produces 
its own self. This organism of nature is inexplicable by 
mere mechanical causes : it admits of being explained 
only teleologically, or by means of final causes. 

(b.) Dialectic. — This antithesis of natural mechanism 
and of teleology, it is the business of the dialectic of 
teleological judgment to reconcile. On the one side we 
have the thesis : All production of material things must 
be held possible only according to mechanical laws. On 
the other side the antithesis is : Some products of 
material nature cannot be held possible on the mere 
supposition of mechanical laws, but demand for their 
explanation the existence of final causes. If these two 
propositions were assumed as constitutive (objective) 
principles for the possibility of objects themselves, they 
would contradict each other ; but as mere regulative 
(subjective) principles for the investigation of nature 
they are not contradictory. Earlier systems treated the 
notion of design in nature dogmatically ; they either 
anirmed or denied it as — with reference to nature — an 
actual thing in itself. We, however, aware that teleo- 
logy is only a regulative principle, are indifferent as to 
whether internal adaptation belongs to nature or not : 
we maintain only that our judgment must regard nature 
as implying design. We look the notion of design, so to 



246 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

speak, into nature, leaving it quite undetermined whether, 
perhaps, another understanding, not discursive like our 
own, might not find any such notion quite unnecessary 
for the comprehension of nature. Ours is a discursive 
understanding, that, proceeding ever from the parts, con- 
ceives the whole as product of them. The organic pro- 
ducts of nature, therefore, in which, on the contrary, the 
whole is originating principle and prius of the parts, it 
cannot otherwise conceive than under the point of view 
of the notion of design. Were there, however, an in- 
tuitive understanding which should recognise in the uni- 
versal the particular, in the whole the parts, as already 
co-determined, such an understanding would, without 
resorting to the notion of design, comprehend the whole 
of nature by reference to a single principle. 

If Kant had been but serious with this notion of an 
intuitive understanding, as well as with the notion of 
immanent adaptation, he would have surmounted in 
principle the position of subjective idealism, to escape 
from which he had made several attempts in his Kritik 
of Judgment. In effect, however, he has only casually 
suggested these ideas, and left their demonstration to his 
successors. 



XXXIX. — Transition to the Post- Kantian Philosophy. 

THE Kantian philosophy soon acquired in Germany an 
almost absolute sovereignty. The imposing bold- 
ness of its general position, the novelty of its results, the 
fertility of its principles, the moral earnestness of it3 
view of the universe, above all, the spirit of liberty and 
moral autonomy which breathed in it, and which power- 
fully supported the tendencies of the time, procured it a 
reception equally enthusiastic and universal. It excited 
an interest in philosophical inquiries that extended itself 
throughout all the educated classes, and in such propor- 
tions as were never before witnessed in any other nation. 
In a short time a numerous school sprang up around it, 
and there were soon few universities in Germany where 
it was not represented by talented disciples. It pre- 
sently exerted an important influence on all departments 
of science and literature, particularly on theology, morals, 
and the liberal sciences (Schiller). The majority of the 
writers, however, of the Kantian school, confine them- 



THE POST-KAXTIAX PHILOSOPHY. 247 

selves to popular explanatory applications of the received 
doctrine, and even the most talented and independent of 
the supporters or improvers of the Critical Philosophy 
(as Peinhold, 1758-1813; Bardili, 1761-1808; Schuke, 
Bed', Fries, Krug, B outer week), sought only to find for it 
a firmer basis of support, or to remove from it certain 
faults and defects, or to demonstrate its position generally 
in a manner more logical and exact. Among those who 
continued and further developed the Kantian philosophy 
there are only two men, Fichte and Herbart, who have 
earned the prominence of an epoch-making position, and 
the praise of actual progress ; while amongst its oppo- 
nents (Hamann, Herder), only one man, Jacobi, was of 
philosophical importance. These three philosophers, 
therefore, are next to be considered ; but, before enter- 
ing on the exacter analysis, we shall premise a brief pre- 
liminary characterization of their relation to Kant. 

(1.) Kant had critically annihilated dogmatism; his 
Kritlk of Pure Reason had for result the theoretic inde- 
monstrability of the three ideas of reason, — God, free- 
will, and immortality. True, he had recalled in a practi- 
cal interest (as postulates of practical reason), these very 
ideas which had just been banished in a theoretical one. 
But as postulates, as mere practical presuppositions, they 
afford no theoretic certainty, and remain exposed to 
doubt. In order to remove this uncertainty, this despair 
of knowledge, which appeared to be the end of the 
Kantian philosophy, Jacobi, a younger contemporary of 
Kant's, opposed as antithesis to the position of criticism 
the position of the philosophy of belief. Certainly the 
highest ideas of reason, the eternal, the divine, are not 
to be attained or proved by means of demonstration : 
but this indemonstrableness, this inaccessibleness, is the 
very nature of the divine. For certain apprehension of 
the highest, of what lies beyond understanding, there is 
but one organ, — feeling. In feeling therefore, in in- 
tuitive cognition, in belief, Jacobi expected to find that 
certainty which Kant had in vain laboured to attain 
through discursive thought. 

(2.) Fichte bears to the Kantian philosophy the rela- 
tion of direct consequence, as Jacobi that of antithesis. 
The dualism of Kant, which represents the ego, now as 
theoretical ego in subjection to the external world, and 
now as practical ego in superiority to it, in other words, 
now as receptive and now as spontaneous in regard of 



248 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

objectivity — this dualism Fichte eliminated by being in 
earnest with the primacy of practical reason, by regard- 
ing reason as exclusively practical, as will, as spontaneity, 
and by conceiving its theoretical, receptive relation to 
objectivity as only lessened power, as only a limitation 
imposed by reason itself. For reason, so far as it is 
practical, objectivity there is none unless what shall be 
due to itself. The will knows no fixed existence, but 
only what is to be or ought to be. That truth is any 
^definite object is thus denied, and the unknown thing- 
in -itself must of itself, as an unreal shadow, fall to the 
ground. ' All that is, is ego,' this is the principle of the 
Fichtian system ; which system, therefore, exhibits sub- 
jective idealism in its consequence and completion. 

(3.) Whilst Fichte' s subjective idealism found its con- 
tinuation in the objective idealism of Schelling, and in 
the absolute idealism of Hegel, there sprang up contem- 
poraneously with these systems a third result of the 
criticism of Kant, the philosophy of Herbart. It con- 
nects, however, rather subjectivo-genetically than ob- 
jectivo-historically with the philosophy of Kant, and 
occupies in principle, for the rest, all historical conti- 
nuity being broken down in its regard, only an isolated 
position. Its general basis is to this extent Kantian, 
that it also adopts for problem, a critical investigation 
and construction of subjective experience. We have 
given it a place between Fichte and Schelling. 



XL. — Jacobi. 

FRIEDPJCH HEIKRICH JACOBI was born in 1743 
at Diisseldorf. His father intended him for busi- 
ness. After having studied at Geneva (and acquired there 
a taste for philosophy), he undertook the business of his 
father ; but gave it up again on becoming Julich-Bergian 
acting councillor of the exchequer and commissioner of 
customs, as well as privy councillor at Diisseldorf. At 
Diisseldorf, or at his country-seat, Pempelfort, in the 
neighbourhood, he spent the greater part of his life ; de- 
voting himself, in by-hours, with zeal and interest, to 
philosophy ; gathering around him, from time to time, 
in his summer quarters, a variety of friends ; keeping 
up his connexion with the absent ones by means of a 
constant correspondence ; and renewing old acquaint- 



JACOBL 249 

anceships, or forming fresh ones, through occasional 
journeys. In the year 1804 he was called to the newly- 
founded Academy of Sciences at Munich, where, in 1819, 
having been President of the Academy from 1807, he 
died. Jacobi was amiable and talented, a man of action, 
and a poet as well as a philosopher ; hence in the last 
capacity his want of logical order and precision in the 
expression of thought. His writings form not a syste- 
matic whole ; but are in their character occasional, com- 
posed * rhapsodically, as the grasshopper jumps/ and 
generally in the shape of letters, dialogues, and novels. 
' It was never my object,' he says himself, * to construct 
a system for the school ; my writings sprang from my 
innermost life, they followed an historical course ; in a 
certain way I was not the author of them, not with my 
own will so, but under compulsion of a higher and irre- 
sistible power.' This want of systematic connexion and 
unity of principle renders the due statement of Jacobi's 
philosophy difficult. We adopt the three following 
points of view as the best for our purpose : (1.) Jacobi's 
polemic against indirect, mediate, or conditional know- 
ledge ; (2.) his principle of direct or intuitive knowledge ; 
(3.) his position to contemporary philosophy, especially 
that of Kant. 

(1.) Jacobi places his negative point of departure in 
Spinoza. In his essay On the System of Spinoza, in Letters 
to Moses Mendelssohn (1785), 'he again drew public atten- 
tion to the quite forgotten philosophy of Spinoza. The 
correspondence is introduced thus : — Jacobi discovers 
that Lessing was a Spinozist and communicates this to 
Mendelssohn ; Mendelssohn refuses to believe it ; and so 
then the further historical pro and contra develops itself. 
The positive philosophical affirmations contained in this 
essay may be reduced to three : (1.) Spinozism is fatal- 
ism and atheism. (2.) Every method of philosophical 
demonstration conducts to fatalism and atheism. (3.) 
In order to escape these we must set limits to de- 
monstration, and acknowledge that belief is the element 
of all human knowledge. (1.) Spinozism is atheism, 
for the cause of the world is to it not a person, not a 
being endowed with reason and will, and action on 
design, and therefore not a God. It is fatalism, for it 
asserts the human will to be only erroneously considered 
free. (2.) This atheism and fatalism, however, are only 
the necessary results of all philosophical demonstration 



250 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

To comprehend a thing is, Jacobi says, to deduce it from 
its proximate causes : it is to find for the actual the pos- 
sible, for the conditioned the unconditioned, for the direct 
the indirect. We comprehend only what we can explain 
from something else. And so our intellection proceeds 
in a chain of conditioned conditions, and this concatena- 
tion forms a natural mechanism, in the exploration of 
which our understanding has its immeasurable field. As 
long as we desire to comprehend and prove, we must 
assume for every object ever a higher one which con- 
ditions it ; where the chain of the conditioned ceases, 
there cease also comprehension and proof ; unless we 
abandon demonstration, we reach no infinite. If philo- 
sophy would with the finite understanding seek to grasp 
the infinite, it must drag down the divine into finitude. 
All philosophy as yet is in this strait ; and yet it appears 
self- evidently absurd to attempt to discover conditions 
for the unconditioned, to convert the absolutely neces- 
sary into a possible, in order to be able to construe it. 
A God that were capable of proof were no God, for the 
ground of proof must always be higher than that which 
is to be proved ; the latter, indeed, can hold its real- 
ity only in fee of the former. If the existence of God 
is to be proved, consequently, God must consent to be 
deduced from some ground which were at once before 
God and above God. Hence Jacobi's paradox : It is the 
interest of science that there should be no God, no super- 
natural, supramundane being. Only on the hypothesis 
that there is nothing but nature, that nature alone is 
what is self-subsistent and all in all, is it possible for 
science to reach its goal of perfection, or to flatter itself 
with the hope of being able to become adequate to its 
object, and itself all in all. This, then, is the conclusion 
which Jacobi draws from the ' drama of the history of 
philosophy : ' * There is no philosophy but that of Spinoza. 
Whoever can suppose that all the works and ways of men 
are due to the mechanism of nature, and that intelligence 
has no function but, as an attendant consciousness, to 
look on, — him we need no longer oppose, him we cannot 
help, him we must leave go. Philosophical justice has 
no longer a hold on him ; for what he denies cannot be 
philosophically proved, nor what he asserts philosophi- 
cally refuted.' In this emergency what resource is there ? 
* Understanding, isolated, is materialistic and irrational ; 
it denies mind, and it denies God. Reason, isolated, is 



J AC OBI. . 251 

idealistic and illogical ; it denies nature, and makes itself 
God.' But this being so we are driven to ask (3.) for 
another mode of cognising the supersensual, and this is 
belief. This flight from finite cognition to belief, Jacobi 
calls the salto mortale of human reason. Every certainty 
which may require to be understood, demands another 
certainty ; and this regression necessitates at last an im- 
mediate certainty, which, far from requiring grounds and 
reasons, shall even absolutely exclude these. But such 
feeling of certainty as depends not on reasons of the un- 
derstanding is belief. The sensuous and the super- 
sensuous we know only through belief. All human 
knowledge originates in revelation and belief. 

These conclusions of Jacobi, contained in his letters on 
Spinoza, could not fail to give universal umbrage to the 
German philosophical world. He was reproached with 
being an enemy of reason, a preacher of blind faith, a 
scorner at once of science and philosophy, a fanatic, a 
papist. In order to repel these reproaches, and justify the 
position he had assumed, he wrote, in 1787, a year and 
a half after the publication of this work on Spinoza, his 
dialogue entitled David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and 
Realism, in which he more definitely and fully developed 
his principle of faith, or of immediate (intuitive) know- 
ledge. 

(2.) First of all, Jacobi distinguishes between his faith, 
and faith on authority. Blind belief is such as is sup- 
ported not on rational grounds, but on the authority of 
another. This is not the nature of his belief, which is 
supported rather on the inmost conviction of the subject 
himself. His belief again is no arbitrary imagination : 
we may imagine all manner of things, but to conceive a 
thing real, for that there is required an inexplicable con- 
viction of feeling which we can only call belief. Of the 
relation in which belief stands to the various aspects of 
human cognition, Jacobi, who is nowise consistent in his 
terminology, expresses himself vacillatingly. In his 
earlier terminology he placed belief (or, as he also named 
it, the faculty of belief) beside sense or receptivity, and 
opposed it to understanding and reason, which two facul- 
ties as synonymous he identified with the finite and con- 
ditioned knowledge of preceding philosophy. Later, 
however, by the example of Kant, he opposed reason to 
understanding, calling that now reason that had been 
previously named sense and belief. Belief of reason, in- 



252 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tuition of reason, is now the organ for apprehension of 
the supersensuous. As such it stands opposed to under- 
standing. There must be assumed to exist in us a higher 
faculty, to which what is true in and beyond the pheno- 
mena of sense, must, in a manner that is beyond the ken 
of sense and understanding, make itself known. Opposed 
to the explanatory understanding, we must acknowledge 
a non-explanatory, positively revelatory, unconditionally 
deciding reason or belief of reason. As there is a per- 
ception of sense, so also there must be a perception of 
reason, against which latter demonstration will as little 
avail as against the former. In excuse of the expression 
a perception of reason, Jacobi refers to the absence of 
any other that were preferable. Language, he says, pos- 
sesses no other terms for the denotation of the mode and 
manner in which our ail-teeming feeling masters what is 
inaccessible to the senses. Should any one affirm that 
he knows something, he may be justifiably asked whence 
or how he knows it ; and then he is inevitably compelled 
to appeal either to the sensation of sense or to senti- 
ment of mind, the latter being as superior to the former 
as man to the brute. And so, says Jacobi, I ad- 
mit without hesitation that my philosophy founds on 
feeling, pure objective feeling, the authority of which is 
to me the highest authority. The faculty of feeling is 
the highest faculty in man ; it is that which specifically 
distinguishes him from the brute ; it is identical with 
reason, or from the faculty of feeling (sentiment) reason 
wholly and solely arises. Of the antithesis, in which, 
with this principle of intuitive cognition, he stood to pre- 
ceding philosophy, Jacobi possessed a perfectly clear con- 
sciousness. ' There has arisen/ he says, in the introduction 
to his collected works, * since Aristotle, an increasing 
effort on the part of the schools to subordinate, nay even 
to sacrifice immediate to mediate knowledge, the faculty 
of perception on which all is originally founded to the 
faculty of reflection, conditioned as it is by the action of 
abstraction, the archetype to the ectype, the substance to 
the word, reason to understanding. Nothing is hence- 
forth to be considered here that has not demonstrated 
itself, twice demonstrated itself, now in perception, and 
now in the notion, now in matter of fact, and again in 
its image, the word, and only in the word, indeed, is the 
matter of fact to be conceived truly to lie and actually to 
be cognised. But every philosophy that assumes a re- 



JACOBI. 253 

flective reason alone must disappear at last in a nullity 
of knowledge. Its end is nihilism. 

(3.) What position Jacobi, in consequence of his prin 
ciple of belief, would assume to the philosophy of Kant, 
may be surmised from what has been already said. Ja 
cobi, indeed, has explained himself in this reference, 
partly in the dialogue ' David Hume' (particularly in the 
appendix to it which treats of * the transcendental ideal 
ism,') and partly in the essay on The Attempt of Kri 
ticismus to bring Reason to Understanding (1801). The 
relation concerned may be reduced to the following three 
heads : (1.) Jacobi dissents from the Kantian theory of 
sensuous cognition. He defends, instead, the position of 
empiricism, maintains the truth of sensuous perception, 
and denies the apriority of time and space. He repre- 
sents Kant as attempting to prove that objects as well as 
the relations of objects are mere determinations of our 
own selves, and wholly inexistent in externality to us. 
For even if it be said that there is something correspon- 
dent to our perceptions as their cause, what this some- 
thing is still remains unknown to us. On Kane's theory 
the laws of perception and thought are destitute of any ob- 
jective validity, or our entire knowledge contains nothing 
whatever of an objective nature. But it is absurd to 
assume that the phenomena disclose nothing of the truth 
that is concealed behind them. On such an assumption 
it were better entirely to eliminate the unknown thing- 
in-itself, and carry idealism out to its natural conclusion. 
' Kant cannot in consistency assume objects for the im- 
pressions on our minds : he ought to maintain the most 
decided idealism.' (2.) Jacobi essentially, on the other 
hand, assents to the Kantian critique of the understand- 
ing. Like Jacobi, Kant too maintained the incompetency 
of the understanding to knowledge of the supersensuous, 
and the possibility of any apprehension of the highest 
ideas of reason only by belief. Jacobi conceives the main 
merit of Kant to lie in the clearing away of the ideas as 
logical phantasms and mere products of reflection. ■ It 
is easy for understanding, forming notions of notions from 
notions, and so gradually rising to ideas, to fancy that, 
by means of these mere logical phantasms, which surpass 
for it the perceptions of sense, it too possesses not only 
the power but the most manifest vocation really to tran- 
scend the world of sense and attain in its flight to a 
higher science, a science of the supersensuous, and that 



254 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

is independent of perception. This error, this self-decep- 
tion, was detected and destroyed by Kant. And thus 
there was obtained, in the first place, at least room for 
genuine rationalism. This is, in truth, the great achieve- 
ment of Kant, and the foundation of his immortal glory. 
The sound sense of our Sage, however, saved him from 
failing to perceive that this room would of necessity 
directly transform itself into an abyss for the swallowing 
up of all knowledge of the truth, unless — a God appeared. 
Here it is that my opinions and the opinions of Kant 
meet.' Jacobi, however, (3.) does not quite accept the 
Kantian denial to theoretic reason of any capacity for 
objective knowledge. He censures Kant for lamenting 
the inability of human reason to demonstrate theoreti- 
cally the reality of its ideas. Kant, to him, is still thus 
in bondage to the dream that sees the indemonstrability 
of the ideas to lie not in their own nature, but in the 
inadequacy of our faculties. And so it was that Kant 
was compelled to seek in the practical field a sort of 
scientific demonstration : a shift and circuit that to every 
deeper thinker must appear absurd, all proof in any such 
case being at once impossible and unnecessary. 

Jacobi extends not his favour for Kant to the post- 
Kantian philosophy. The pantheistic tendency of the 
latter was peculiarly repugnant to him. 'For Kant, 
that deep thinking, candid philosopher, the words God, 
free-will, immortality, religion, had quite the same mean- 
ing that they possess, and have always possessed, for 
common-sense in general. Kant played no tricks with 
them. It gave offence that he irrefutably demonstrated 
the inadequacy to these ideas, of all speculative philo- 
sophical proofs. For the destruction of the theoretical 
proofs he made amends by the necessary postulates of 
pure practical reason. And by this expedient, according 
to his own assertion, philosophy was perfectly relieved ; 
and the good, which it had always hitherto missed, at 
length happily reached. But now, critical philosophy's 
own daughter (Fichte), makes a god of the moral order 
of the universe, a god, then, expressly without conscious- 
ness and personality. These bold words, which were 
quite openly and unhesitatingly spoken, excited, indeed, 
some little apprehension. But the alarm soon ceased. 
Directly afterwards, indeed, when the second daughter of 
the critical philosophy (Schelling), completely withdrew 
what had been left sacred by the first — the distinction 



FICHTE. 255 

between natural and moral philosophy, between liberty 
and necessity, and without farther preamble declared 
nature alone all and nothing above nature, the result 
was no astonishment at all : this second daughter is an 
inverted or beatified Spinozism, an ideal materialism.' 
The latter expression in reference to Schelling, with 
which, in the same work, other and severer allusions 
were connected, provoked the latter's well-known reply 
(Schelling 1 s Memorial of the Work : On Divine Things, 
1812). 

Throwing back a critical glance now on the philosophi- 
cal position of Jacobi, we may designate its distinctive 
peculiarity to be the abstract separation of understanding 
and feeling. These Jacobi was unable to bring to agree- 
ment. 'In my heart,' he says, 'there is light, but 
directly I would bring it into the understanding, it dis- 
appears. Which of the two elements is the true one ? 
That of the understanding, which displays indeed forms 
that are firm, but behind them only a bottomless abyss ? 
Or that of the heart, which, lighting with promise up- 
wards, fails still in definite knowledge ? Is it possible 
for the human mind to attain to truth, unless through 
union of both elements into a single light ? And is such 
a union attainable without the intervention of a miracle ? ' 
When now, however, Jacobi, in order to reconcile this 
difference of the heart and the understanding, attempted 
to replace mediate (finite) cognition by immediate (in- 
tuitive) cognition, he only deceived himself. That very 
immediate cognition, which is supposed by Jacobi to be 
the special organ of the supersensuous, is in truth medi- 
ate, has already described a series of subjective inter- 
mediating movements, and can pretend to immediacy 
only in entire oblivion of its own nature and origin. 



XLL— Fichte. 

JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE was born in 1762 at 
Bammenau in Upper Lusatia. A Silesian nobleman 
interested himself in the boy, and placed him first with 
a clergyman and then at the institute of Schulpforte. 
In his eighteenth year, Michaelmas 1780, Fichte entered 
the university of Jena as a student of theology. He 
soon found himself attracted to the study of philosophy ; 
and the system of Spinoza in particular took a powerful 



256 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

hold on him. The straits of his external position served 
only to harden his will and his energy. In the year 
1784, and afterwards, he held the position of tutor in 
various families in Saxony, but, on applying in 1787 for 
the situation of country pastor there, he was rejected in 
consequence of his religious views. He was obliged now 
to quit his native country, to which he was devotedly 
attached, and accept a tutorship in Zurich, where he 
made the acquaintance of his future wife, a niece of 
Klopstock's. He returned in Easter of 1790 to Saxony, 
and assumed the position of a privatim docens in Leipzig. 
Here he became acquainted with the philosophy of Kant 
in consequence of being engaged to give private lessons 
to a student of his system. In the spring of 1791 we 
find him, as a family-tutor again, in Warsaw, and shortly 
afterwards in Konigsberg, whither he had gone to make 
acquaintance with Kant, whom he enthusiastically ad- 
mired. Instead of a letter of introduction he handed 
to Kant his Critique of all Revelation, a work com- 
posed by him in four weeks. Fichte attempted, in this 
work, to deduce from practical reason the possibility of 
a revelation. He proceeds not quite a priori, however, 
but under a certain empirical condition — this, namely, 
that it be presumed that man has fallen into such moral 
ruin that the moral law has lost all its influence on will, 
or, in short, that all morality is extinct. In such a case, 
it is reasonable to expect on the part of God, as moral 
regent of the universe, the communication to men of pure 
moral principles through the medium of the senses, or 
the revelation of himself as lawgiver to them by means 
of a special and appropriate manifestation in the world of 
sense. An actual revelation would be here, then, a pos- 
tulate of practical reason. Even the possible matter of 
such a revelation Fichte attempted to determine a priori. 
We stand in need of no knowledge but that of God, free- 
will, and immortality ; the revelation, therefore, will 
substantively contain nothing more. But, on the one 
hand, it will contain these doctrines in an intelligible 
form ; and, on the other, it will not invest them in such 
symbolical dress as will claim for itself unlimited rever- 
ence. This tractate, which appeared anonymously in 
1792, excited the greatest attention, and was universally 
regarded as a work of Kant's. It was partly the cause 
of Fichte — then in Zurich for the celebration of his mar- 
riage — receiving soon afterwards (in 1793) a call to the 



FICHTE. 257 

chair of philosophy at Jena, which Reinhold, invited 
to Kiel, had just vacated. At this time, also, Fichte 
published his anonymous Contributions in Correction of 
the Judgments of the Public on the French Revolution, a 
work which sat badly on the memories of the govern- 
ments. Fichte entered on his new office at Easter in 
1794, and speedily saw his reputation established. In a 
series of publications (the Wissenschaftslehre appeared in 
1794, the Naturrecht in 1796, and the Sittenlehre in 1798), 
he endeavoured to approve and complete his new prin- 
ciple in transcendence of that of Kant ; and exercised in 
this manner a powerful influence on the scientific move- 
ment in Germany, and all the more that Jena was one 
of the most flourishing universities, and the focus then 
of all energizing intellects. Here Fichte stood in inti- 
mate relation with Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegels, W. 
Humboldt, and Hufeland. Unfortunately in a few years 
these relations came to a rupture. In 1795 Fichte had 
become co-editor of Niethammer's Philosophical Journal, 
Forberg, rector at Saalfeld, a contributor, offered, in 
1798, for insertion in this journal, an article on 'the 
determination of the notion of religion.' Fichte, who 
had advised against it, was still induced to insert it, but 
he premised an introduction ■ on the grounds of our faith 
in a divine government of the world,' the purpose of 
which was to remove or lessen anything that might ap- 
pear offensive in the article itself. Both contributions, 
however, were followed by a vehement cry of atheism. 
The Electorate of Saxony confiscated the journal through- 
out its territories, and despatched a requisition to the 
Ernestine Dukes, the common protectors of the University 
of Jena, for the calling of the author to account, and the 
infliction of condign punishment on conviction. Fichte, in 
answer to the edict of confiscation, published (1799) a jus- 
tification of himself in his Appeal to the Public : a Work 
which Petitions to be Read before it is Confiscated. With 
reference to his own government, he vindicated himself 
in the Formal Defence of the Editors of the Philosophi- 
cal Journal against the Accusations of Atheism. The 
government of Weimar, which desired to consider as well 
-irira- as the Electorate of Saxony, procrastinated with 
its decision. Meantime Fichte, however, having been 
secretly informed, rightly or wrongly, that it was in- 
tended to make an end of the whole affair by dismissing 
the accused with a reprimand for their imprudence, wrote, 

K 



258 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

in his desire either for legal conviction or signal satisfac* 
tion, a private letter to a member of the government, in 
which he declared his resolution to send in his resigna- 
tion in case of a reprimand, and concluded with the 
threat that several of his friends would with him quit 
the University, and found a new one elsewhere in Ger- 
many. The government accepted this declaration as a 
letter of resignation, thereby indirectly pronouncing the 
reprimand as inevitable. Religiously and politically 
suspect, Fichte looked about him in vain for an asylum. 
The Prince of Rudolstadt, to whom he turned, refused 
him his protection, and even in Berlin his arrival (1799) 
at first excited commotion. Here, in familiar intercourse 
with Friedrich Schlegel, and also with Schleiermacher and 
Novalis, his views gradually modified themselves. The 
Jena catastrophe had diverted him from the one -sided 
moral position which, by example of Kant, he had 
hitherto occupied, to the sphere of religion ; and now it 
was his endeavour to reconcile religion with his position 
in the Wissenschaftslehre, through adoption of a certain 
mysticism (second form of the philosophy of Fichte). 
After he had lectured privately, and delivered philosophi- 
cal discourses in Berlin for several years, he received, in 
1805, on the recommendation of Beyme and Altenstein 
to the Chancellor of State (Hardenberg), a chair of philo- 
sophy at Erlangen, with the permission at the same time 
of returning to Berlin in winter to lecture, as usual, to 
a general audience, on philosophical subjects. Thus, in 
the winter of 1807-8, while a French marshal governed 
Berlin, and while the voice of the orator was often 
drowned by the noise of the enemy's drums in the 
street, he delivered his celebrated * addresses to the Ger- 
man nation.' Fichte promoted in the most zealous 
manner the establishment of the Berlin University : for 
only to a complete change of the system of education 
did he look for the regeneration of Germany. On the 
opening of the new university in 1809, he was made 
dean of the philosophical faculty the first year, and 
rector the second. On the outbreak of the war of 
liberation, Fichte, both by word and by deed, took the 
liveliest interest in it. His wife in attending the 
wounded and sick contracted a nervous fever : she, in- 
deed, was saved ; but her husband fell under the same 
malady, and died on the 28th of January 1814, before 
completion of his fifty-second year. 



FICHTE. 259 

In the following exposition of his philosophy we dis- 
tinguish, first of all, between the two (internally different) 
periods, that of Jena and that of Berlin. Under the first 
period, again, we have the Wissenschaftslehre in one divi- 
sion, and Fichte's practical philosophy in another. 

I. — The Philosophy of Fichte in its Earlier Form. 

(1.) Fichte's theoretical philosophy, or his Wissenschafts- 
lehre (theory of knowledge, gnosology). — That Fichte's 
subjective idealism is only the consequence of the prin- 
ciples of Kant, has been already (xxxrx.) briefly ex- 
plained. It was unavoidable that Fichte should wholly 
reject Kant's incognizable (but, nevertheless, supposed 
real) thing-in -itself, and should refer that outer impact 
which Kant attributed to these things in themselves, to 
the inner action of the mind itself. That only the ego 
is, and that what we regard as its limitation by external 
objects, is but its own self -limitation — this is the funda- 
mental thesis of the Fichtian idealism. 

Fichte himself lays the foundations of his gnosology 
thus : — In every perception there are present at once an 
ego and a thing,!* or intelligence and its object. Which 
of the two sides shall be reduced to the other ? Abstract- 
ing from the ego the philosopher obtains a thin g-in-it self, 
and is obliged to attribute the ideas to the object ; ab- 
stracting from the object again, he obtains only an ego 
in itself. The former is the position of dogmatism, the 
latter that of idealism. Both are incapable of being re- 
conciled, and a third is impossible. We must choose one 
or the other then. To assist decision, let us observe the 
following : (1.) The ego is manifest in consciousness ; 
but the thing-in-itself is a mere fiction, for what is in 
consciousness is only a sensation, a feeling. (2.) Dog- 
matism undertakes to explain the origin of an idea ; but 
it commences this explanation with an object in itself ; 
that is, it begins with something that is not and never is 
in consciousness. But what is materially existent pro- 
duces only what is materially existent — being produces 
only being — not feeling. The right consequently lies with 
idealism, which begins not with being (material exist- 
ence), but with intelligence. To idealism intelligence is 
only active, it is not passive, because it is of a primitive 
and absolute nature. For this reason its nature is not 
being (material outwardness), but wholly and solely 



260 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

action. The forms of this action, the necessary system 
of the acts of intelligence, we must deduce from the prin- 
ciple (the essential nature) of intelligence itself. If we 
look for the laws of intelligence in experience, the source 
from which Kant (in a manner) took his categories, we 
commit a double blunder, — (1.) In so far as it is not de- 
monstrated why intelligence must act thus, and whether 
these laws are also immanent in intelligence ; and (2.) In 
so far as it is not demonstrated how the object itself 
arises. The objects, consequently, as well as the prin- 
ciples of intelligence are to be derived from the ego 
itself. 

In assuming these consequences, Fichte believed him- 
self to be only following the true meaning of the tenets 
of Kant, ' What my system specially is, whether, as I 
believe, genuine Kriticismus duly followed out, or however 
otherwise it may be named, is nothing to the point/ 
Fichte maintains his system to entertain the same view 
of the subject as that of Kant, and he conceives the 
numerous adherents of the latter to have only misunder- 
stood and misrepresented their master. In his second 
introduction to the Wissenscha/tslehre (1797) Fichte grants 
these expositors of the Kritih of Pure Reason that this 
work contains passages in which Kant demands sensations, 
given to the subject from without, as material conditions 
of objective reality. He shows, however, that these pas- 
sages are wholly irreconcilable with innumerable asser- 
tions of the Kritik (to the effect that there cannot be any 
talk whatever of any operation on the part of a transcen- 
dental object in itself and external to us) — if by source 
of sensations anything else be understood than a mere 
thought. 'So long,' Fichte continues, ' as Kant does not 
in so many words expressly declare that he derives sen- 
sations from the impress of a thing-in-itself, or, to use his 
own terminology, that sensation is to be explained by 
reference to a transcendental object independently exis- 
tent without us, I will not consent to believe what these 
expositors tell us in regard to Kant. Should he, how- 
ever, make this declaration, then I will rather believe that 
the Kritih of Pure Reason is a work of chance, than that 
it is a product of intellect.* The aged Kant did not let 
the public wait long for his answer, however. In the 
announcement-sheet of the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung 
(1799), he formally, and with much emphasis, rejected 
the Fichtian improvement of his system, protested against 



FICHTE. 261 

all interpretation of his writings on any assumed spirit, 
and stood by the letter of his theory as contained in 
the Kritik of reason. Reinhold in reference to this re- 
marks : * Since Kant's public declaration as regards the 
philosophy of Fichte, it is no longer susceptible of doubt, 
but that Kant conceives his system himself, and wants 
others to conceive it, quite differently from the manner 
in which Fichte has conceived it. But the most that we 
can conclude from this is, that Kant himself does not 
consider his system inconsequent because it assumes a 
something external to subjectivity. It by no means 
follows, however, that Fichte is wrong in declaring 
the system in question to be inconsequent because of 
this assumption.' That Kant himself had a feeling of 
this inconsequence is proved by his alterations in the 
second edition of the Kritik of Pure Reason, where the 
idealistic side of his system is made decidedly to recede 
behind the empirical one. 

The general stand -point of the Wissenschaftslehre appears 
in what has been said : it would make the ego its prin- 
ciple, and from the ego it would derive all the rest. That 
we are to understand by this ego, not the particular in- 
dividual, but the universal ego, universal reason, need 
hardly be remarked. Egoity and individuality, the pure 
and the empirical ego, are entirely different ideas. 

As concerns the form of the Wissenschaftslehre we have 
yet to premise the following. The Wissenschaftslehre must 
according to Fichte find an ultimate principle from which 
all others shall be derived. This principle must be directly 
certain in its own self. And unless our knowledge is to 
be made up of mere incoherent fragments, such a prin- 
ciple there must be. But again, as any such principle is 
plainly insusceptible of proof, there is nothing left for us 
but trial. "We must institute an experiment, and only in 
that way is a proof possible. That is, if we do find a 
proposition to which we may reduce all others, this pro- 
position is the principle sought. Besides the first propo- 
sition, however, two others may be thought, of which the 
one, unconditioned in matter, is conditioned in form by, 
and dependent on, the first, whilst the other is the reverse. 
These three axioms, finally, will be so related to each 
other, that the second shall be the opposite of the first, 
and the third the result of both. On this plan, and in 
accordance with the previous exposition, the first abso- 
lute axiom will start from the ego, the second oppose to 



262 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

it a thing or a non-ego, and the third bring the ego into 
reaction against the thing or the non-ego. This Fichtian 
method (Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis), like that of Hegel 
after it, is a combination of the analytic and synthetic 
methods. Fichte has the merit of having been able by 
means of it to be the first to deduce all the philosophical 
fundamental notions from a single point, and to bring 
them into connexion, instead of only taking them up 
empirically, like Kant, and setting them down in mere 
juxtaposition. Commencement is made with a funda- 
mental synthesis ; in this synthesis opposites are looked 
for by means of analysis ; and these opposites are then 
re-united in a second, more definite (richer, concreter) 
synthesis. But analysis will again detect opposites even 
in this second synthesis. There is thus a third synthesis 
necessary, and so on, till at last opposites are reached 
which can only be approximately conjoined. 

We are now at the threshold of the Wissenschaftslehre, 
which falls into three parts : (a.) first principles of the 
whole science, (b.) the foundations of theoretical know- 
ledge, and (c.) the foundations of practical (moral) science. 

The first principles are, as said, three in number : one 
absolutely unconditioned, and the others relatively so. 
(1.) The absolutely original, directly unconditioned, first 
principle must express that action which is known in fact 
to underlie all consciousness, and alone render it possible. 
This principle is the proposition of identity, A == A. This 
proposition remains behind and will not be thought 
away when we abstract from all the empirical forms of 
consciousness. It is a fact of consciousness and must 
therefore be universally admitted ; but at the same 
time, it is not, like every other empirical fact of 
consciousness, something conditioned, but, as free act, 
it is something unconditioned. When we maintain 
too that without any further ground this proposition 
is certain, we ascribe to ourselves the power of tak- 
ing something for granted. We do not take for granted 
in it that A is, but only that A is, jif A is. It is the form 
of the proposition only which we consider, and not the 
matter of it. In matter, then, the proposition A = A is 
conditioned (hypothetical) : it is unconditioned only in 
form, only in vis nexus. Should we seek a proposition 
unconditioned in matter as well as in form, then in place 
of A we must substitute the ego (and to this we have a 
perfect right, for the connexion of subject and predicate 



FICHTE. 263 

pronounced by the judgment A = A is in the ego and 
the work of the ego). The proposition A = A, conse- 
quently, is thus transformed into the new proposition, ego 
= ego. This latter proposition now is not only uncon- 
ditioned in form but also in matter. While it was im- 
possible for us to say with reference to A = A, that A is, 
we can now say with reference to ego = ego, that the 
ego is, I am. It is the explanatory ground of all facts of 
empirical consciousness that before anything can be 
given in the ego, the ego itself must be given. This 
directly self-determined, self-grounded ground is the 
ground of all action in the human mind, and is conse- 
quently, pure, inherent, independent activity. The ego 
assumes itself, and it is by this mere self-assumption ; it 
is, only because it has assumed itself. And conversely, 
the ego assumes its existence by virtue of its mere exist- 
ence. It is at once the agent and the product of the 
action. I am is the expression of the only possible origi- 
nal act. In a logical point of view we have in the first 
principle of the Wissenschaftslehre (A = A) the law of 
identity. From the proposition A = A, we proceeded to 
the proposition ego = ego. The latter, however, derives 
not its validity from the former, but contrariwise. The 
ego is the priiis of all judgment, and is the foundation of 
the nexus of subject and predicate. The logical law of 
identity originates, therefore, in the ego = ego. In a 
metaphysical point of view we obtain from the first pro- 
position of the Wissenschaftslehre the category of reality. 
This we obtain by abstracting from the particular matter 
concerned, and by reflecting merely on the mode of action 
of the human spirit. All categories are deduced from the 
ego as the absolute subject. (2.) The second fundamen- 
tal principle, which, conditioned in matter but uncon- 
ditioned in form, is as little susceptible of proof or 
derivation as the first, is equally a fact of empirical 
consciousness : it is the proposition non-A is not = A. 
This proposition, as a spontaneous conclusion, an origi- 
nal act, is unconditioned in form like the first, nor 
can it be derived from the first. It is conditioned in 
matter, because, if a non-A is to be established, there must 
be first assumed an A. But let us consider this principle 
more narrowly. In A = A the form of the act was 
thesis, statement ; but here it is antithesis, counter-state- 
ment. The power of direct, absolute counter-statement 
(contraposition) is assumed, and this contraposition is, in 



264 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

form, an absolutely possible act, that is unconditioned 
and independent of any higher ground. But, in matter, 
antithesis (contraposition) presupposes thesis (position) : 
if any non-A is to be granted, A must be previously 
granted. What non-A is, is not made known to me by 
the possibility of absolute contraposition as such. I 
know only that non-A must be the opposite, the counter- 
part of some certain thing A. What non-A is, conse- 
quently, I know only under the condition of knowing A. 
But the ego is A, or in the ego A has absolute position. 
There is originally nothing else in position (seen and 
granted) but the ego, and only the ego is directly and ab- 
solutely in position (seen and granted). Absolute contra- 
position consequently is possible only of the ego. But 
what is contraposed to the ego — its opposite and counter- 
part — is the non-ego. Opposed to the ego is its absolute 
counterpart, a non-ego : this is the second fact of empiri- 
cal consciousness. Whatever belongs to the ego, the 
counterpart of that must, by virtue of simple contraposi- 
tion, belong to the non-ego. From this proposition, now 
(ego is not = non-ego) we obtain the logical law of con- 
tradiction, as from the first that of identity. Metaphy- 
sically, too, we obtain from this proposition, by abstracting 
from the particular act of judgment concerned, and 
merely referring to the form of the inference, the cate- 
gory of negation. (3.) The third fundamental principle, 
conditioned in form only, is almost entirely susceptible 
of proof, because there are now two propositions for its 
determination. With every step we approach nearer to 
the sphere in which all is susceptible of proof. The third 
principle is conditioned in form and unconditioned in 
matter : that is to say, the problem for the act, which it 
expresses, is given in the two preceding propositions, but 
not also its solution. This latter results unconditionally 
and absolutely from an arbitrary decision of reason. The 
problem which the third principle has to solve is the re- 
conciliation, namely, of the contradiction implied in the 
other two. On the one hand the ego is completely sub- 
lated by the non-ego : position is impossible for the ego, 
so far as the non-ego is in position. On the other hand, 
the non-ego has position only in the ego, in consciousness : 
the ego, consequently, is not sublated by the non-ego ; 
after all the sublated ego is not sublated. The result 
now, then, is non-A = A. In order to resolve this con- 
tradiction which threatens to destroy the identity of on 



FICHTE. 265 

consciousness, the only absolute fundament of our know- 
ledge, we must find an X, by virtue of which correctness 
will be still possible for the first two principles without 
prejudice to the identity of consciousness. The opposites, 
the ego and the non-ego, must be united, set equal, in 
consciousness without mutual neutralization ; they must 
be taken up into the identity of the one sole consciousness. 
How, now, may being and non-being, reality and nega- 
tion, be thought together without mutual destruction ? 
They must mutually limit each other. Limit then, is the 
X required : this is the required original action of the 
ego, and, thought as category, it is the category of deter- 
mination or limitation. But in limitation the category 
of quantity is already implied : for to limit anything is to 
sublate its reality by negation not in whole but in part. 
In the notion of limit, consequently, there lies, besides 
the notions of reality and negation, that also of divisi- 
bility, of the susceptibility to quantity in general. 
Through the action of limitation, as well the ego as the 
non-ego is assumed as divisible. Further, there results 
from the third principle, as from the two former, a logi- 
cal law. Abstraction being made from the matter, the ego 
and non-ego, and only the form of the union of opposites 
through the notion of divisibility remaining, we have, 
namely, the logical proposition of ground or reason, which 
may be expressed in the formula, A in part = non-A, 
non-A in part = A. The ground is ground of relation so 
far as each opposite is identical with the other in some 
single significate (nota), while it is ground of distinction 
again, so far as each equal is opposed to the other in some 
single significate. The complex now of what is uncondi- 
tionally and absolutely certain is in these three principles 
exhausted. They may be comprised in the following for- 
mula : In the ego I oppose to the divisible ego a divisible 
non-ego. No philosophy transcends this proposition, but 
all true philosophy must accept it ; and in accepting it, 
philosophy becomes Wissenschaftslehre. All thiit is hence- 
forth to present itself in the system of knowledge must be 
derived thence, and in the first place the further divisions 
of the Wissenschaftslehre itself. In the proposition that 
ego and non-ego mutually limit each other, there are 
these two elements : (1.) the ego exhibits itself as limited 
by the non-ego (that is to say, the ego is cognitive) ; (2.) 
conversely the ego exhibits the non-ego as limited by the 
ego (that is to say, the ego is active). These propositions 



266 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

are the foundation, the one of the theoretical, the other of 
the practical part of the Wissenschaftslehre. The latter 
part is problematical at first : for a non-ego limited by an 
active ego does not at first exist, and we have to wait for 
its realization in the theoretical part. 

The elements of theoretical knowledge present a con- 
tinuous series of antitheses and syntheses. The funda- 
mental synthesis is the proposition that the ego is 
determined by the non-ego. Analysis demonstrates in 
this proposition two subordinate mutually opposed pro- 
positions : (1.) the non-ego, as active, determines the 
ego, which is in so far passive. But as all action must 
originate in the ego, it is (2.) the ego itself that is 
absolutely self-determinative. We have here the con- 
tradiction of action and passion at once on the part of 
the ego. As, then, this contradiction would subvert the 
above proposition, and by consequence also the unity of 
consciousness, we are under the necessity of finding a 
point, a new synthesis, in which the apparent opposites 
may be reconciled. This is accomplished by reconciling 
in the notion of divisibility the notions of action and 
passion, falling as they do under those of reality and 
negation. The propositions, ' The ego determines/ i The 
ego is determined, ' coalesce in the proposition, 'The ego 
partly determines itself, and is partly determined. ' But 
more, both are to be thought as one and the same. With 
greater precision then : as many parts of reality as the 
ego determines in itself, so many parts of negation does 
it determine in the non-ego, and, conversely, as many 
parts of reality as the ego determines in the non-ego, so 
many parts of negation does it determine in itself. This 
determination is reciprocal determination or reciprocity. 
In this way Fichte is found to have deduced the last of 
Kant's three categories of relation. In the same manner 
(namely, by synthesis of analysed antitheses), he con- 
tinues to deduce the remaining two categories of this 
class, or those of causality and substantiality. For ex- 
ample : so far as the ego is determined, is passive, the 
non-ego possesses reality. The category of reciprocity, 
then, in which it is indifferent which side is one or the 
other, is brought to this form that the ego is passive, and 
the non-ego active. But the notion expressive of this re- 
lation is the notion of causality. That to which activity 
is ascribed is called cause (the primitive reality) ; that to 
which passivity is ascribed, effect; and both in union 



FIGHT E. 267 

constitute an action or operation. Again, the ego deter- 
mines itself. This is a contradiction : (1.) The ego de- 
termines itself, it is what acts ; (2.) It determines itself, 
it is what is acted on. Thus, in a single relation and 
action, reality and negation are at once ascribed to it. 
Solution for such a contradiction as this is only possible 
in such mode of action as is action and passion at once : 
the ego must through action determine its passion, and 
through passion its action. The solution implies recourse, 
then, to the aid of the notion of quantity. All reality is 
in the ego first of all as absolute quantum, as absolute 
totality, and the ego so far may be compared to a 
great circle. A determinate quantum of action, or a 
limited sphere within the great circle of action, is reality 
indeed, but compared with the totality of action it is 
negation of this totality, or passion. Here we have the 
solution sought : it lies in the notion of substantiality. 
So far as the ego is considered to comprehend the entire 
compass, the totality of realities, it is substance ; so far 
as it is referred to a determinate sphere of the entire 
compass, it is accidental. No accident can be thought 
without substance, for to be able to recognise anything 
as a determinate reality, it must be first referred to real- 
ity in general or substance. Substance is thought vicissi- 
tude in general : the accident is a determinate that 
changes place with what itself changes. Originally there 
is only a single substance, the ego. In this single sub- 
stance all possible accidents, and therefore all possible 
realities, are contained. Ego alone is the absolute in- 
finite : I think, I act, is already limitation. Fichte's 
philosophy is therefore Spinozism, but, as Jacobi felici- 
tously named it, an inverted, idealistic Spinozism. 

Glancing back, we perceive that Fichte has abolished 
the objectivity which Kant had left. Only the ego is. 
But the ego presupposes a non-ego, and so, therefore, a 
sort of object. How the ego accomplishes the determi- 
nation of this object, it is now the business of the theo- 
retical Wissenschaftslehre to demonstrate. 

In regard to the relation of the ego to the non-ego, 
there are two extreme views, according as we begin with 
the notion of causality or with that of substantiality. 
(1.) Beginning with the notion of causality there is as- 
sumed in the passion of the ego an action of the non- 
ego. The passion of the ego must have a ground. This 
ground cannot be in the ego, which assumes for itself 



268 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

action only. It is consequently in the non-ego. Here, 
then, the difference between action and passion is not 
conceived as merely quantitative (passion as diminished 
action), but the passion is opposed qualitatively to the 
action : a presupposed action of the non-ego is therefore 
the real ground of the passion in the ego. (2.) Begin- 
ning with the notion of substantiality, the action of the 
ego is assumed to imply also a passion in the ego. Here 
the passion is in quality nothing but action, a diminished 
action. Whilst, then, by the first view, the passive ego 
has a ground qualitatively different from the ego, or a 
real ground, it has, by the second view, only a quanti- 
tatively diminished action of the ego for its ground, or it 
has an ideal ground. The first view is dogmatic realism, 
the second dogmatic idealism. The latter maintains : all 
reality of a non-ego is simply a transference from the 
ego. The former maintains : transference is impossible, 
unless there previously exist an independent real non-ego, 
a thing-in-itself. There is thus an antithesis, to be re- 
solved only in a new synthesis. Fichte attempts this 
synthesis of idealism and realism, through the interme- 
diate system of the critical idealism. For this purpose 
he endeavours to show that the ideal ground and the 
real ground are one and the same. Neither the mere 
action of the ego is ground of the reality of the non-ego, 
nor the mere action of the non-ego ground of the pas- 
sion of the ego. The two are to be thought together 
thus : on the action of the ego there presents itself, but 
not without help of the ego, an opposed principle of re- 
pulsion (the Anstoss — the plane of offence), which bends 
back the action of the ego, and reflects it into itself. 
This repelling principle consists in this, that the subjec- 
tive element cannot be farther extended, that the radiat- 
ing activity of the ego is driven back into itself, and 
self -limitation results. What we call objects are nothing 
but the various breakings of the action of the ego against 
an incomprehensible obstacle, and these affections of the 
ego are then transferred by us to something external to 
us, or are conceived by us as things occupying space. 
The Fichtian principle of reflexion consequently is in the 
main the same thing as the Kantian thing-in-itself, only 
that it is conceived by Fichte as a product from within. 
Fichte proceeds next to deduce the subjective faculties 
of the ego, which, theoretically, mediate or seek to medi- 
ate between the ego and the non-ego, — imagination, con* 



FICHTE. 269 

ception (sensation, perception, feeling), understanding, 
judgment, reason, and, in connexion with these, the sub- 
jective projections of perception, time, and space. 

We stand now before the third part of the Wissen- 
schaftslehre, or the exposition of the practical sphere. We 
left the ego an intelligence. But that the ego is intelli- 
gent at all, is not brought about by the ego, but by some- 
thing external to the ego. We were unable to conceive 
the possibility of a perceptive intelligence unless by pre- 
supposing an obstruction and reflexion of the action of 
the ego, striving otherwise into the infinite and the inde- 
finite. The ego, accordingly, is, as intelligence, depen- 
dent on an indefinite and wholly indefinable non-ego, and 
only through and by means of such a non-ego is it in- 
telligence. But this limit must be broken through. The 
ego, in all its attributes, is still to be supposed as abso- 
lutely self-affirmed, and completely independent there- 
fore of any possible non-ego whatever, but as intelligence 
it is finite, dependent ; the absolute ego and the intelli- 
gent ego, consequently, though still to be supposed one 
and the same, are mutually opposed. This contradiction 
may be remedied only by assuming that the ego, as in- 
susceptible of passion, and possessed only of absolute 
action, does itself spontaneously determine the still un- 
known n on -ego to which the reflexion (Anstoss) is attri- 
buted. The limit which the ego, as theoretical ego, 
opposed to itself in the non-ego — this limit the same ego 
as practical ego must endeavour to withdraw, that is, it 
must endeavour to reabsorb into itself the non-ego (or 
comprehend it as self -limitation of the ego). The Kant- 
ian supremacy of practical reason is in this way realized. 
The transition of the theoretical into the practical part, 
the necessity of the advance from the one to the other, is 
more particularly represented by Fichte thus : The busi- 
ness of the theoretical part was to conciliate ego and non- 
ego. To this end, middle term after middle term was 
intercalated without success. Then came reason with 
the absolute decision, * Inasmuch as the non-ego is incap- 
able of union with the ego, non-ego there shall be none,' 
whereby the knot was not undone indeed, but cut. It is 
thus, then, the incongruity between the absolute (prac- 
tical) ego and the finite (intelligent) ego that necessitates 
the transition from the theoretical to the practical sphere. 
Nor does the incongruity wholly disappear even in tho 
practical sphere : action is but an infinite striving to sur- 



270 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

mount the limit of the non-ego. The ego, as practical, 
tends, indeed, to transcend the actual world, to found an 
ideal world, such a world as would exist if all reality were 
the product of the ego : but this striving remains en- 
cumbered with finitude, partly because of the ego itself 
in its reference to objects (which objects are finite), and 
partly because the intelligence (the conscious affirming 
and realizing of itself as itself on the part of the ego), re- 
mains perpetually conditioned by an opposing non-ego 
that checks its action. It is our duty at once, and an 
impossibility to strive to reach the infinite. Neverthe- 
less just this striving united to this impossibility is the 
stamp of our destiny for eternity. 

And thus, then (so Fichte sums up the results of the 
Wissenschaftslehre), the entire nature of finite rational 
beings is comprehended and exhausted. An original idea 
of our absolute being ; effort towards reflection on our- 
selves in accordance with this idea ; limitation not of 
this effort, but of our actual definite existence (which is 
only realized by this limitation), through an opposing 
principle, a non-ego, or in general through our own fini- 
tude ; consciousness of self and in particular of our prac- 
tical effort ; determination of our intelligence, accordingly, 
and through it of our actions ; enlargement of our limits 
progressively ad infinitum. 

(2. ) Fichte's Practical Philosophy. — -Fichte applies the 
principles which he has developed in his Wissenschafts- 
lehre to practical life, and particularly to his theory 
of rights and duties. With methodic rigour here, too, he 
seeks to deduce all, without accepting from experience (as 
mere fact so found) anything unproved. Thus, in these 
practical interests, even a plurality of persons is not pre- 
supposed, but first of all deduced ; nay that man is pos- 
sessed of a body is deduced — not certainly stringently. 

The theory of right or rights (natural law), Fichte 
founds on the notion of the individual. He first deduces 
the notion of right as follows. A finite rational being 
cannot realize himself without ascribing to himself a free- 
dom of action. But this ascription involves the existence 
of an external world of sense, for a rational being cannot 
ascribe action to himself without implying the existence 
of an object to which this action is to be directed. More 
particularly still, this freedom of action in a rational being 
presupposes other rational beings ; for without them he 
would be unconscious of it. We have thus a plurality of 



FICHTE. 271 

free individuals, each possessing a sphere of free action. 
This co-existence of free individuals is impossible without 
a relation of right (law). Retaining each his own sphere 
with freedom, but with limitation of himself, they recog- 
nise each other as free and rational beings. This relation 
of a reciprocity in intelligence and freedom between ra- 
tional beings — according to which each limits his freedom 
by leaving possible the freedom of the others, on condi- 
tion that these others similarly limit themselves in return 
— is a relation of right (natural law). The first principle 
here then runs thus : Limit your freedom by the notion 
of that of all the other rational beings (persons) with 
whom you may come into connexion. After investiga- 
tion of the applicability of this principle and consequent 
deduction of the corporeal part or anthropological side of 
man, Fichte proceeds to the special theory of right (juris- 
prudence). It falls into three parts : (1.) Rights which 
depend on the mere notion of personality, are primitive 
rights. Primitive right is the absolute right of the per- 
son to be only a cause in the world of sense, and no mere 
means. This gives (a.) the right of personal freedom, 
and (6.) the right of property. But still every relation 
of particular persons is conditioned by the reciprocal re- 
cognition of these. Each has to limit the quantum of 
his freedom in behoof of that of the rest ; and only so 
far as another respects my freedom, have I to respect 
his. In order to assure the right of the person, then, 
there must be assumed a mechanical force for application 
to the case in which the other does not respect my primi- 
tive rights, and this is (2.) the right of coercion. Coercive 
or penal laws demand that the volition of every unjust 
end shall be followed by its own contrary, that every 
unjust will shall be annihilated, and right restored in its 
integrity. For the establishment of such penal law, and 
such universal coercive authority, the free individuals 
must enter into a mutual contract. But such contract is 
only possible in a commonweal. Natural law, then, the 
relation of right (justice) between man and man presup- 
poses (3. ) political rights, namely (a.) a free contract on 
the part of the political units as a mutual guarantee of 
rights ; (b.) positive laws, a political legislature, through 
which the common will of all becomes law ; (c.) an execu- 
tive power, a political authority which realizes the com- 
mon will, and in which, therefore, the private and the 
general will are synthetically united. Fichte's conclud- 



272 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

ing result here is this : on the one side there is the State 
of reason (philosophical jurisprudence), on the other, the 
State as it actually exists (positive juristic and political 
principles). But there arises thus the problem, to make 
the actual State more and more adequate to the rational 
State. The science which contemplates this approxima- 
tion is politics. Complete adequacy to the idea is not to 
be expected on the part of any actual State. Every poli- 
tical constitution is legitimate, provided only it renders 
not impossible the progress to a better. Wholly illegi- 
timate is only that constitution which would maintain all 
as it now is. 

The absolute ego of the WissenschaftsleJire sunders in 
the Pechtslehre (theory of rights) into an infinite number 
of persons : to restore unity is the problem of the Sitten- 
lehre (theory of duties). Rights and morals are essen- 
tially different. Eight (justice) is the external necessity 
to do something or to omit something"*in order not to 
infringe the liberty of others : the internal necessity 
to do or to omit something quite independently of 
external motives constitutes morality. And as the 
system of rights arose from the conflict of the tendency 
to freedom in one subject with the tendency to freedom 
in another subject, so the system of duties arises similarly 
from a conflict, not however from any external conflict, 
but, on the contrary, from an internal conflict of different 
motives in one and the same person. (1.) Every rational 
being strives to independency, to freedom for the sake of 
freedom. This is the fundamental and pure spring of 
action, and it supplies at once the formal principle of 
morals, the principle of absolute autonomy, of absolute 
independency of all that is external to the ego. But (2.) 
as a rational being in actual existence is empirical and 
finite, as by force of nature he assumes his own self as a 
corporeal being to which a non-ego opposes itself, there 
dwells in him beside the pure spring another and empiri- 
cal spring, the instinct of self-preservation, the instinct of 
nature, the aim of which is not freedom but enjoyment. 
This instinct of nature supplies the material, eudaemonis- 
tic principle of a striving for enjoyment for the sake of 
enjoyment. These springs seem mutually contradictory ; 
but from a transcendental point of view they are one and 
the same primitive spring of human action. For even the 
instinct of self-preservation is an emanation of the ten- 
dency of the ego towards action, and it cannot be de- 



FICHTE. 273 

stroyed : destruction of the instinct of nature would be 
followed by the destruction of all definite effort, of all 
conscious action. The two principles are to be united, 
then, but in such a manner that the natural shall be sub- 
ordinated to the pure principle. This union can only 
occur in an act which in matter looks (in obedience to the 
natural principle) to the world of sense ; but in ultimate 
end (obeying the pure principle) to an entire emancipa- 
tion from the world of sense. Neither mere negative 
withdrawal from the world of objects, in order to be a 
pure self-subsistent ego, nor yet mere striving to enjoy- 
ment is the problem, but a positive action on the world 
of sense so that the ego shall always become freer, its 
power over the non-ego greater, and the supremacy of 
reason over nature more and more realized. This striving 
to act free in order always to become more free, is, in its 
combination of the pure and the natural principle, the 
moral or practical motive. The end of moral action 
is placed in iufinitude, however ; it can never be reached, 
for the ego can never possibly become wholly independent 
of any limitation, so long as it is destined to remain an 
intelligence, a self-conscious ego. The nature of the morai 
act is consequently to be defined thus. All action must 
consist of a series of acts, in continuing which the ego 
may be able to regard itself as always approaching to 
absolute independency. Every act must be a term in 
this series ; no act is indifferent ; to be always engaged 
in an act that lies in this series, this is our moral voca- 
tion. The principle of morals therefore is, Fulfil con-^ 
tinually your vocation ! It belongs, in a formal, sub- 
jective reference, to moral action, that it is an intelligent, 
free action, an action in accordance with ideas : in all that 
you do, be free, in order to become free. We ought blindly 
to followneither the pure nor the natural spring. We ought 
to act only in the clear conviction of our vocation or duty. 
We must do our duty only for the sake of duty. The • 
blind impulses of uncorrupted instinct, sympathy, com- 
passion, benevolence, etc., do indeed, in consequence of 
the original identity of the natural and the pure principle, 
advance the same interests as the latter. But as natural 
impulses they are not moral ; the moral motive possesses 
causality as if it possessed none, for it says, Be free ! 
Only through free action according to the notion of his 
absolute vocation is a rational being absolutely self-de- 
pendent; only action on duty is such a manifestation of 
s 



274 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

a purely rational being. The formal condition of the 
morality of our acts, therefore, is, Act always up to the 
conviction of your duty ; or, Act according to your con- 
* science. The absolute criterion of the correctness of our 
conviction is a feeling of truth and assurance. This in- 
stinctive feeling never deceives, for it only exists when 
there is perfect harmony of the empirical with the pure, 
original ego. Fichte now develops his system of special 
duties, which, however, we shall here omit. 

The religious opinions of Fichte are contained in the 
above-mentioned essay, On the ground of our Belief in 
a Divine Government of the World, as well as in his writ- 
ten defences which followed. The moral order of the 
universe, says Fichte, is that Divinity which we assume. 
By right action this divine element becomes alive and 
actual in us. Only under presupposition of it, presup- 
position, that is, of the moral end being capable of reali- 
zation in the world of sense by means of a higher order, 
is each of our acts performed. Faith in such order is the 
complete and perfect faith ; for this moral order, actually 
operative in life, is itself God : we neither require any 
other god, nor can we comprehend any other. We pos- 
sess no ground of reason for going beyond this moral 
order of the universe, and assuming, on the principle of 
concluding from the derivative to the primitive, that 
there is also a particular being who is the cause of it. Is 
this order, then, at all contingent in its nature ? It is 
the absolute first of all objective knowledge. But even 
granting your conclusion, what properly have you as- 
sumed in it ? This being is to be supposed different from 
you and the world, it is to be supposed to act in the latter 
in obedience to ideas ; it is to be supposed consequently 
capable of ideas, possessed of personality, of conscious- 
ness ? What then do you call personality, consciousness ? 
Without doubt that which you have found in yourself, 
which you have known only in experience of yourself, 
and which you have named only from experience of your- 
self. But that it is absolutely impossible for you to 
think this being without limitation and finitude, the 
slightest attention to the construction of the notion will 
readily show you. By the mere attribution of the predi- 
cate you convert it into what is finite, into a being that 
is the fellow of yourself ; and you have not, as you in- 
tended, thought God, but only multiplied your own self 
in thought. The notion of God as a particular substance 



FICHTE. 275 

is contradictory and impossible. God veritably exists 
only in the form of a moral order of the universe. All 
belief in any divine element that involves more than this 
notion is to me a horror, and utterly unworthy of a 
rational being. Morality and religion are here, as with 
Kant, naturally one : both are a grasping to the super- 
sensual, the one by action, the other by belief. This 
1 religion of a happy right-doing ' we find further deve- 
loped by Fichte in his written defences against the accu- 
sation of atheism. He even maintains in these that 
nothing but the principles of the new philosophy is cap- 
able of restoring to men their lost sense of religion, and 
of revealing the true nature of the teachings of Christ. 
This he endeavours to demonstrate particularly in his 
Appeal to the public, where he says : To answer the 
questions, What is good ? What is true ? this is the aim 
of my philosophical system. That system maintains 
first of all that there is something absolutely true and 
good ; there is something that to the free flight of 
thought is restrictive and authoritative. A voice that 
may not die proclaims to man that something is his duty, 
which do he must, and for no other reason. This prin- 
ciple in our nature opens to us an entire new world ; we 
receive from it a higher existence, which, completely 
independent of nature, has its foundations wholly and 
solely in ourselves. This absolute self-sufficiency of 
reason, this perfect emancipation from dependency, I 
will name it blessedness. As the single but infallible 
means of blessedness, conscience points out performance 
of my duty. An immovable conviction is laid within 
me, therefore, that there exists a law, an established 
order which renders blessedness a necessary result of the 
pure moral character. That the man, who would main- 
tain the dignity of his reason, must establish himself on 
faith in this order of a moral universe, must regard each 
of his duties as a provision of that order, must consider 
all their results as good, as blessed, and joyfully submit to 
it, — this, absolutely necessary, is the essence of religion. 
Create within you the spirit of duty, and you will know 
God, and, whilst you appear to others as in the world of 
sense, you will, in your own self, know yourself to be, 
even here below, already in the life eternaL 



276 HISTOE T OF PHILOSOPH T. 



II. — The Philosophy of Fichte in its Later Form. 

All that Fichte has contributed of importance to specu- 
lative philosophy is contained in the system which has 
been just considered. After quitting Jena, however, this 
system underwent a gradual modification in consequence 
of several influences. It was naturally difficult to pre- 
serve so uncompromising an idealism as that of the Wis- 
senschaftslehre ; again the intercurrent nature-philosophy 
of Schelling remained not without effect on Fichte's own 
mode of thought, although he denied this, and fell into a 
bitter dispute with Schelling in regard to it ; and lastly, 
his private, not quite easy, external circumstances, may 
have tended to modify his general views of the world. 
Fichte's writings of this second period are for the most 
part of a popular nature, and calculated for a general 
audience. They bear all of them the stamp of his keen 
spirit and of his lofty manly moral nature. They want, 
however, the originality and the scientific rigour of his 
earlier writings. Even those among them which are 
more particularly scientific, satisfy not the demands for 
genetic construction and philosophical method, made 
earlier by Fichte himself with so much earnestness both 
on himself and others. His teaching now, indeed, has 
so much the appearance of a loosely connected intertex- 
ture of old subjectivo-idealistic views, and of new ob- 
jectivo -idealistic ones, that Schelling was justified in 
characterizing it as the most thorough syncretism and 
eclecticism. The distinction of his new position, namely, 
is, that — with points of resemblance to Neo-Platonism in 
it— he attempts to transform his subjective idealism into 
objective pantheism, or the ego of his earlier philosophy 
into the absolute, into the notion of God. God, the idea 
of whom he had formerly placed only at tne end of his 
system in the equivocal shape of a moral order of the 
universe, became now the absolute beginning and the 
single element of his philosophy. This philosophy took 
on in this manner, then, quite another colour. Religious 
gentleness assumed the place now of moral severity ; in- 
stead of the ego and duty, life and love became the prin- 
ciples of his philosophy ; in room of the keen dialectic of 
the Wissenschaftslehre a predilection for mystical and figu- 
rative modes of expression manifested itself. Especially 
characteristic of this second period is the leaning to re- 



FICHTE. 211 

ligion and to Christianity, chiefly in the work, Guidance 
to a Blessed Life. Fichte maintains here that his new 
doctrine is the doctrine of Christianity, and particularly 
of the Gospel of John. This Gospel Fichte insisted on 
regarding at that time as the only genuine authority on 
Christianity, because the other apostles, remaining half 
Jews, had left standing the fundamental error of Jewry, 
its doctrine of a creation in time. Fichte attributed 
special worth to the first part of the prologue of John : 
in it the creation of the world out of nothing is refuted, 
and the true conception of a revelation equally eternal 
with God, and necessarily given with his being, enun- 
ciated. What, on the other hand, is said in the prologue 
of the incarnation of the Logos in the person of Christ, 
possesses for Fichte only an historical import. The ab- 
solute and eternally true position is, that, at all times 
and in every one without exception, who vitally perceives 
his unity with God, and who really and in deed devotes 
his entire individual life to the divine life within him — 
in him the eternal word, quite in the same manner as in 
Jesus Christ, becomes flesh and receives a personally 
sensuous and human form. The entire community of 
the faithful, the first born as well as the later born, 
coalesce in the one common vital source of all, the God- 
head. And so, then, Christianity, its end attained, coin- 
cides once more with absolute truth, and proclaims 
that all require to come into unity with God. So long 
as a man wants to become something for himself, God 
comes not into him, for no man can become God. So 
soon, however, as he annuls himself perfectly, completely, 
and to the last root, there remains but God alone, and 
He is All in All. Man cannot make for himself a God ; 
nevertheless himself, as the negation proper, he can 
annul, and then he is merged in God. 

The result of his advanced philosophizing, Fichte sums 
up, briefly and clearly, in the following verses, which we 
take from two of his posthumous sonnets : — 

■ Th' undyiDg One 
Lives as thou liv'st, and sees in all thou see'st, 
Nought is but God ; and God is nought but life. 
Quite clear the veil is raised from thee, and lo I 
'Tis self : let die, then, this destructible ; 
And henceforth God will live in all thy strife. 
Consider what survives this strife below ; 
Then will the veil as veil be visible, 
And all revealed thou'lt see celestial life.' 



278 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



XLII.— Herbart. 

A PECULIAR, in many respects estimable, continua- 
tion of the philosophy of Kant was attempted by 
Johann Friedrich Herbart (b. 1776 at Oldenburg; 1805, 
Professor of Philosophy at Gottingen; 1808, Kant's suc- 
cessor at Konigsberg ; 1833, recalled to Gottingen, where, 
1841, he died). The philosophy of Herbart distinguishes 
itself from most of the other systems in this way, that it 
sets not up an idea of reason as its principle, but, like 
the Kantian, finds its problem in a critical investigation 
and construction of subjective experience. It, too, is 
criticism, but with results that are at once peculiar, and 
altogether different from the Kantian. For this reason, 
from its very principle, it occupies, in the history of 
philosophy, an isolated position : almost all the earlier 
systems, instead of appearing as moments of the one true 
philosophy, are to it mistakes. It is particularly charac- 
teristic of it that it is eminently hostile to the post- 
Kantian philosophy of Germany, especially to Schelling's 
philosophy of nature, in which it can see only a delusion 
and a cobweb of the brain. In comparison with the 
philosophy of Schelling, indeed, it would rather declare 
its agreement with the philosophy of Hegel, although the 
latter is its polar opposite. We give a brief exposition 
of its leading ideas. 

(1.) The foundation and starting-point of philosophy 
is, to Herbart, the common view of things, knowledge 
gained by the method of experience. A philosophical 
system is nothing more than an experimental scheme, by 
means of which some particular thinker attempts to 
answer certain questions which he has put to himself. 
Every question that is to be proposed in philosophy must 
consider wholly and solely the given facts, or rather 
must owe to them its suggestion ; for the sole basal field 
of certainty for man, is experience alone. With it is 
every beginning in philosophy to be made. Thought 
must submit to the notions of experience : they shall 
lead it, not it them. Tlius, then, experience is wholly 
and solely the object and foundation of philosophy; 
what is no given fact, that cannot be an object of 
thought ; and it is impossible to realize any knowledge 
in excess of the limits of experience. 

(2.) The facts of experience are certainly the basis of 



HERB ART. 279 

philosophy ; but, as simply ready -found, they are still 
without it. The question occurs, What is the first fact, 
the beginning of philosophy ? Thought has first to free 
itself from experience, to make clear to itself the diffi- 
culties of the investigation. The beginning of philosophy \ 
where thought raises itself above the element that is 
simply given, is therefore deliberative doubt, or scepsis. 
There is a lower and a higher scepticism. The lower 
doubts only that things are so constituted as they appear 
to us ; the higher transcends the general phenomenal 
form, and asks whether there be anything at all existent 
there. It doubts, for example, the succession of time ; 
it asks, in regard to design in natural objects, whether it 
belongs to them, or is simply thought as in them, etc. 
And thus we gradually attain to an expression of the pro- 
blems which constitute the interest of metaphysics. The 
result of scepticism is thus not negative, but positive. 
Doubt is nothing but the thinking of the notions of ex- 
perience, and these are the burthen of philosophy. 
Scepticism by means of this reflection enables us to per- 
ceive that the notions of experience, though referent to 
a given factum, do not possess, nevertheless, an import 
that is thinkable, that is free from logical absurdities. 

(3.) Metaphysics, to Herbart, is the science of what 
is intelligible in experience. Thus far, namely, we have 
reached perception of two truths. On the one side it is 
seen that the sole basis of philosophy is experience, and 
on the other that scepsis has shaken the credibility of 
experience. First of all, then, this scepsis must be con- 
verted into a precise knowledge of the metaphysical pro- 
blems. Notions are obtruded on us by experience which 
are in cogitable ; that is to say, they are thought indeed 
by our ordinary understanding, but this thought is only 
a confused and obscure thought, that does not distinguish 
and compare the contradictory attributes (notce, logical 
significates). Skilled thought, on the contrary, logical 
analysis, finds in the notions of experience (time, space, 
origination, motion, etc.), contradictions, contradictory, 
mutually negating characters (notce). What are we to 
do then? These notions cannot be rejected, for they are 
given to us, and we can only hold by what is given ; 
neither can they be accepted, for they are incogitable, 
logically impracticable. The only measure that is left 
us is — to transform them. Transformation of the notions 
of experience^ the elimination of their contradictions, is 



280 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

the special act of speculation. Thus it is scepsis that 
has brought forward the more special problems, and it is 
the resolution of the contradictions of these that is the 
business of metaphysics. The most important of these 
problems are those of inherence, mutation, and the ego. 

The relation between Herbart and Hegel is here par- 
ticularly evident. As regards the contradictory nature 
of the categories and notions of experience both are 
agreed. But in the next step they separate. Inherent 
contradiction, says Hegel, is the very nature of these 
notions, as of all things in general : becoming, for example, 
is essentially unity of being and non- being, etc. That, 
rejoins Herbart, is impossible so long as the principle of 
contradiction still retains its authority. That the notions 
of experience present contradictions, that is no fault of 
the objective world, but of subjective perception, which 
must redress its erroneous construction by a transforma- 
tion of these notions and an elimination of their contra- 
dictions. Herbart accuses the philosophy of Hegel of 
empiricism, in that it accepts from experience these con- 
tradictory notions unaltered ; and, notwithstanding dis- 
cernment of their contradictory nature, regards them, 
just because they are empirically given, as justified, and 
even, on their account, transforms the science of logic 
itself. Hegel and Herbart are related as Heraclitus and 
ParmeDides (VI. and vii). 

(4.) From this point Herbart proceeds in the following 
manner to his ' reals.' The discovery, he says, of con- 
tradictions in all our notions of experience has that in it 
to lead to absolute scepticism, to despair of truth. But it 
is evident at once that if the existence of any basis of rea- 
lity is to be denied, appearance also (sensation, perception, 
thought) is sapped and ruined. But that being inadmis- 
sible, we must grant this proposition : so much appear- 
ance, so much proof of reality. To experience as given we 
certainly cannot ascribe any true, any absolutely existent 
reality ; it is not independent per se, it is in, or through, 
or by occasion of, another. True being (reality) is an abso- 
lute being, that, as such, excludes all relativity, all depen- 
dency ; it is absolute position, which we, for our part, have 
not to produce, but recognise. So far as this position is 
to be supposed to imply a something, reality belongs to it. 
What veritably is, therefore, is always a quale, a some- 
thing, which is regarded as real. In order, now, that this 
real may correspond to the conditions which are implied 



HER BART 231 

in the notion of the absolute position, its ivhat must be 
thought, (a.) as absolutely positive or affirmative, that is 
to say, as without negation or limitation, which would 
cancel the absoluteness ; [b.) as absolutely simple, or as not 
a plurality and not subjected to inner antitheses ; (c.) as 
insusceptible of any quantitative determinations, that is 
to say, not as a quantum, divisible, extended in time and 
space, nor yet as a continuum. It is always to be kept iu 
view, too, that this absolute reality is not merely a reality 
thought, but one that is self-subsistent, self-dependent, 
and therefore only for the recognition of thought. The 
notion of this reality constitutes the entire foundation of 
the metaphysics of Herbart. One example of this. The 
first problem to be resolved by metaphysics is the problem 
of inherence — the thing and its qualities. Every object 
of perception appears to the senses as a complex of seve- 
ral qualities. But all these qualities are relative. We 
say, sound, for example, is the quality of a body. A body 
sounds — but not without air ; what now is this quality 
in airless space ? A body is heavy, but only on the earth. 
It is coloured, but not without light ; how then about 
this quality in the dark ? Plurality of qualities, again, 
is incompatible with the unity of the object. If we ask, 
what is this thing, the answer is, the sum of its qualities : 
it is soft, white, sonorous, heavy, but the question was 
of a one, not of a many. The answer tells what it has, 
not what it is. The catalogue of qualities, moreover, is 
always incomplete. The what of a thing, therefore, can 
consist neither in the several qualities, nor in their com- 
bination. The only answer that remains is : a thing is 
that unknown x, whose position is represented by the 
positions implied in the various qualities ; in short, it is 
substance. For if we abstract from the qualities of a 
thing in order to see what the thing quite in its own self 
is, we find nothing left at last, and we perceive that it 
was only the complex of qualities, only their combina- 
tion into a whole, that we regarded as the particular thing. 
But inasmuch as every appearance points to a particular 
reality, and we must assume, consequently, as many 
realities as there are appearances, the obvious conclusion 
is that we have to regard the basis of reality that under- 
lies a thing and its qualities, as a complex of realities, a 
complex of many simple substances or monads, of which 
monads the quality besides is different in the different 
(monads). The grouping of these monads repeated in 



282 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

experience is considered by us as a thing. Let us briefly 
consider now what modification this conception of posi- 
tion (reality) entails on the main metaphysical notions. 
The notion of causality, in the first place, for example, is 
evidently no longer able to maintain its usual form. In 
its regard, in point of fact, we perceive at most the suc- 
cession in time, but not the necessary connexion of the 
cause with the effect. The cause itself can neither be 
transcendent, nor immanent ; for, in the first case, real 
actions of one real upon another real contradict the notion 
of absolute reality, and, in the other case, substance 
would require to be thought as one with its qualities, 
which contradicts the conclusions relative to a thing and 
its qualities. As little can the reason why particular 
natures are found together be expected from the notion 
of the real, for the real is absolutely unalterable. Caus- 
ality it is impossible to explain otherwise, then, than by 
conceiving the many reals (which underlie the qualities) 
to be an equal number of causes of an equal number of 
appearances, each independently. With causality the 
problem of change coheres. As, however, there exists to 
Herbart no inner change, no self -determination, no becom- 
ing or life, — as the monads are and remain unchange- 
able in themselves, they do not become different in quality, 
they are different the one from the other, from the first, 
and each of them preserves its own quality without altera- 
tion. A solution for the problem of change, then, can 
only be sought in a theory of the disturbances and self- 
preservations of the monads. But if all that can be 
called, not merely apparent, but actual change, in the 
monads is to be reduced to ' self-preservation,' as the last 
glimmer of action and life, the question still is, how will 
you explain at least the appearance of change ? For an 
answer it is necessary to have recourse to two expedients, 
first, that of contingent aspects, and, second, that of in- 
tellectual space. The contingent aspects, a conception 
borrowed from mathematics, import, and in reference to 
the special problem, that the same notion may, without 
the least alteration in itself, take on in relation to others 
a variety of values ; thus the same straight line may be 
regarded as radius or as tangent, the same note as in 
harmony or not in harmony. By help of this conception, 
then, it is possible so to regard what actually takes place 
in the case of a monad brought into contact with others 
opposed to it in quality, that an actual change shall on 



HERBART. 283 

the one hand appear to be affirmed, while on the other 
the monad itself shall remain absolutely unaltered. (A 
grey colour, for example, beside black is white, beside 
white, black, without any change of its quality.) The 
expedient of intellectual space, again, originates in the 
necessity to think the monads as well together as not 
together. Through its application elimination is accom- 
plished particularly of the contradictions in the notion of 
motion. Lastly, it is evident that the notions of matter 
and the ego (the transformation or psychological explana- 
tion of which is the remaining business of metaphysics) 
are, like the preceding, no less self-contradictory than in- 
compatible with the fundamental real ; for it is impos- 
sible to derive material extension from inextended 
monads, and with the loss of matter there follows that 
also of the usual (apparent) notions of time and space, 
while as regards the ego, it is not possible for its notion 
either, representing as it does that of a thing with many 
changeable qualities (states, powers, faculties), to be ad- 
mitted without transformation. 

Herbart's * reals* remind of the atoms of Democritus 
(rx. 2), the ' one' of Parmenides (vi. ), and the monads of 
Leibnitz. As penetrable, however, they are distinguished 
from the atoms. Herbart's reals are as capable of being 
conceived in the same space, as mathematical points of 
being thought in the same spot. In this respect they 
have a greater resemblance to the Eleatic One : both are 
simple, and occupy an intellectual space. But then the 
reals differ from the one, not only as many, but as various, 
and even opposed. The resemblance of the reals to the 
monads of Leibnitz has been already alluded to ; the lat- 
ter, however, are essentially intelligent (percipient, con- 
cipient, ideating) ; they are beings with inner states ; 
whereas to Herbart intelligence belongs as little as every 
other state to the fundamental real itself. 

(5.) The physics and psychology connect with the meta- 
physics. The first explains, in accordance with the third, 
such matters as repulsion, attraction, affinity, etc. The 
second relates to the soul, the ego. The ego is firstly a meta- 
physical problem, as involving contradictions. Again, it 
is a psychological problem, explanation of its genesis being 
required. Firstly, then, those contradictions come to be 
considered which lie in the identity of the subject and 
the object. The ego affirms itself and is consequently 
an object to itself. The object affirmed, however, is iden- 



284 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

tical with the subject affirming. The ego consequently 
is, as Fichte says, a subject-object, and as such full of 
the most perplexing contradictions ; for the subject and 
the object can never be thought as identical without 
contradiction. The ego, however, is once for all given ; 
we cannot turn our backs upon it ; what is left then 
is to free it from contradiction. This is possible by 
regarding the ego as intelligence, and the various sen- 
sations, thoughts, etc., as the various appearances. 
The solution here, then, is the same as in the case 
of inherence. The thing was regarded in that case 
as a complex of as many reals as there are qualities ; 
and, inner being substituted for outer qualities, the 
ego is not differently situated. What we call ego, 
therefore, is nothing but the soul. As a monad, as an 
absolute real, the soul is simple, eternal, indissoluble, in- 
destructible, and, consequently, immortal in duration. 
From this position Herbart directs his polemic against 
the ordinary psychology that attributes certain powers 
and faculties to the soul. What takes place in the soul 
is nothing but self-preservation, a process that differs and 
varies only in reference to the difference and variety of 
the other reals. These reals, coming into conflict with 
the monad that is soul, are the causes of the various states 
of the latter — of all that apparently infinite multiplicity 
of sensations, ideas, affections. This theory of self-pre- 
servation is the entire basis of the psychology of Herbart. 
What ordinary psychology calls feeling, thinking, per- 
ceiving, are but specific varieties in the self-preservation 
of the soul ; they represent no special conditions of the 
inner real, but only relations of the reals generally, rela- 
tions which, pressing in at once from a variety of direc- 
tions, partly neutralize, partly intensify, and partly 
modify one another. Consciousness is the sum of 
these relations, borne by the soul to the other monads. 
Neither the relations nor the correspondent ideas, how- 
ever, are equally definite ; as said, neutralizations, inten- 
sifications, modifications take place, and a general 
interaction results, which admits of being calculated by 
the principles of statics. The neutralized ideas are not 
conceived wholly to disappear either ; they remain as it 
were at the door of consciousness, till, through combina- 
tion with others like themselves, they attain the due 
intensity and are enabled to enter with recognition. 
This movement of the ideas, which is excellently described 



HERBART. 285 

by Herbart, is capable of being submitted to the prin- 
ciples of mechanics ; and we may form a conception now 
of what is known as Herbart's application of mathematics 
to empirical psychology. The repressed ideas, of which, 
darkly operative at the door of consciousness, we are 
only half aware, are the feelings. These announce them- 
selves, according as their tendency inwards has more or 
less success, as desires. Increased by the hope of fruition 
the desires are will. Will is not any special faculty of 
the soul, but depends on the relation of the predominant 
ideas to the rest. Energetic decision, the character of the 
man, results from the duration in consciousness of a cer- 
tain mass of ideas to the weakening of others, or their 
repulsion to the door of consciousness. 

(6.) The value of the philosophy of Herbart lies in its 
psychology and metaphysics. The other spheres of the 
spirit of man, law, morals, politics, art, religion, are for 
the most part in its case but very poorly furnished. Not 
that excellent relative remarks are altogether wanting, 
but they cohere ill with the speculative principles of the 
system. Herbart expressly isolates the particular philo- 
sophical sciences, and rigorously separates, in especial, 
theoretical and practical philosophy. He censures the 
attempts at unity in philosophy, and ascribes to them a 
variety of errors ; for logical, metaphysical, and aestheti- 
cal forms are to him essentially disparate. The objects 
of ethics and of aesthetics as a whole, concern an imme- 
diate evidence, while to metaphysics, in which all know- 
ledge is gained only by the elimination of error, any such 
evidence is, in its very nature, alien. The aesthetical prin- 
ciples, on which practical philosophy founds, are to Her- 
bart independent of the reality of any object, and come 
forward of themselves, even in the greatest metaphysical 
darkness, with intuitive certainty. The moral elements, 
he says, are pleasing and displeasing relations of will. 
He thus establishes practical philosophy entirely on 
aesthetic judgments. These are involuntary and intuitive, 
and attach to objects the predicate of appro vableness or 
disapprovableness without proof. It is in this conclusion 
that the difference between Herbart and Kant is seen at 
its greatest. 

On the whole the philosophy of Herbart may be de- 
scribed as an extension of the monadology of Leibnitz, 
full of patient ingenuity, but devoid of inward fertility, 
or any germ of movement. 



286 HISTOR Y OF PHILOSOPHY. 



XLI1I.—Schelling. 

SCHELLING originates in Fichte ; and without f urtlier 
introduction we may proceed at once to an exposi- 
tion of his philosophy, inasmuch as its derivation from 
the Fichtian forms part of the history of its growth, and 
is characterized there. 

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph ScJielling was born at Leon- 
berg in Wiirtemberg, on the 27th of January 1775. 
Endowed with unusual precocity, he entered the theolo- 
gical seminary of Tubingen in his fifteenth year, and 
applied himself partly to the study of philology and 
mythology, partly and especially to that of the philo- 
sophy of Kant. During this period he was in personal 
relations with Holderlin and Hegel, He appeared very 
early as an author : first on taking his degree of master 
of arts, namely, in 1792, with a dissertation on the third 
chapter of Genesis, in which he gives an interesting philo- 
sophical interpretation of the Mosaic account of the Fall. 
In the following year, 1793, he contributed to the Me- 
morabilien of Paulus his essay of a kindred nature, 
Myths and Philosophemes of the Earliest Times, In the 
last year of his stay at Tubingen (1794-95) we have his 
two philosophical works : On the Possibility of a Form of 
Philosophy in general, and Of the Ego as Principle of 
Philosophy, or of the Unconditioned in Human Knowledge, 
On completing his university course, Schelling went to 
Leipzig in the capacity of tutor to the Barons von Riede- 
sel, and shortly afterwards to Jena, where he became 
Fichte's disciple and fellow-labourer. On Fichte's re- 
moval from Jena, he was appointed in his place as teacher 
of philosophy, and began, gradually abandoning the posi- 
tion of Fichte, to develop more and more his own ideas. 
At Jena he edited the Journal of Speculative Physics, and, 
in conjunction with Hegel, the Critical Journal of Philo- 
sophy. In 1803 he was removed as Professor of Philo- 
sophy to Wurzburg, and in 1807 to Munich, in the capacity 
of ordinary member of the newly instituted Academy of 
Sciences there. A year later he became General Secre- 
tary of the Plastic Arts, and, later still, on the establish- 
ment of the university of Munich, one of its professors. 
After Jacobi's death, he was made President of the 
Academy at Munich, but removed in 1841 to Berlin, 
where he gave several courses of lectures, particularly on 



SCHELLING. 287 

the ' Philosophy of Mythology,' and on that of * Revela- 
tion.' For many years Schelling published nothing of 
importance, and only after his death, which took place 
at Ragaz on the 20th of August 1854, did the publication 
(completed in 186H of his later works commence. Ten 
volumes comprise his earlier writings (some of them un- 
published in his lifetime), and four others his concluding 
lectures. The philosophy of Schelling is no finished and 
completed system to which his various works are but as 
component parts : like the philosophy of Plato, it is 
essentially a history of development, a series of progres- 
sive stages, through which the philosopher himself 
passed. Instead of systematically completing the various 
sciences in agreement with his general principle, Schelling 
seemed always beginning again with the beginning, 
always labouring at new positions, new foundations, 
mostly, like Plato, in connexion with earlier philoso- 
phemes (Fichte, Spinoza, Neo-Platonism, Leibnitz, Jacob 
Bbhm, Gnosticism), which he endeavoured to assimilate, 
one after the other, into his own system. An exposition 
of his philosophy, therefore, has to guide itself accor- 
dingly, and to take up its several periods singly, pursuant 
to the succession of the various groups of his writings. 

1. — First Period : 
Schelling' s Derivation from Fichte. 

Schelling's starting-point was Fichte, to whom, in his 
earliest writings, he openly adhered. His work On the 
Possibility of a Form of Philosophy is intended to de- 
monstrate the necessity of an ultimate principle, as first 
proclaimed by Fichte. His other work, On the Ego, again, 
shows how the ultimate ground of our knowledge lies 
only in the ego, and how every true philosophy conse- 
quently must be idealism. If our cognition is to have 
any reality, there must be a point possible in which idea- 
lity and reality, thought and being, shall coincide and be 
identical ; and if cognition, in consequence of the exist- 
ence of a higher principle that conditioned it, were not 
itself highest, it could not possibly be absolute. Fichte 
. regarded this work as a commentary on his Wissen- 
schaftslehre ; it contains hints, nevertheless, of Schelling's 
own later position, especially in the accent laid on the 
unity of knowledge, on the necessity of the various 
sciences becoming in the end one. The Letters on Dog* 



288 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

matism and Criticism, 1795, are a polemic against those 
followers of Kant, who lapse from the critico-idealistic 
position of the master back into the ancient dogmatism 
again. In a series of articles in the journal of Nietham- 
nier and Fichte, Schelling gave, 1797-98, a general view 
of the latest philosophical literature — also from Fichte's 
position. But still he begins here to direct his attention 
to a philosophical deduction of nature, if as yet, Fichte- 
like, only from the nature of the ego. The same views 
were further developed in his Ideas towards a Philosophy 
of Nature, 1797, and in his work On the World- Soul, 
1798. The leading thoughts of the last three works are 
as follows. The origin of the notion of matter lies in the 
nature and action of the mind. Mind, namely, is the 
unity of a limiting and an unlimited force. Limitless- 
ness would render consciousness as impossible as an ab- 
solute limitedness. Feeling, perception, cognition is con- 
ceivable only if the force that tends into limitlessness 
become limited by an opposing force, and this latter in 
turn be relieved of its limits. Mind is but the antagon- 
ism of these two forces, or the perpetual process of their 
relative unity. Nature is similarly situated. Matter as 
such is not the prius, but the forces of which it is the 
unity. It is to be conceived only as continual product 
of attraction and repulsion, the primitive forces, and not 
as inert mass. But force is as it were what is imma- 
terial in matter. It is that which may be compared to 
the mind. Matter and mind, then, exhibiting the same 
conflict of opposed forces, must themselves be capable of 
union in a higher identity. But the mental organ for 
the apprehension of nature is perception, which possesses 
itself of space — space limited and filled by the forces of 
attraction and repulsion — as object of outer sense. Thus 
the inference was necessary for Schelling, that there is the 
same absolute in nature as in mind, and that their har- 
mony is no mere reflexion of thought. * Or if you main- 
tain that it is we who only transfer this idea to nature, 
then never upon your soul has any dream dawned of what 
for us nature is and should be. For we will not allow 
nature only to agree contingently (as it were through 
interposition of a third something), with the laws of in- 
tellect, but necessarily and originally, and maintain her, 
not only to express, but to realize these laws, and to 
be nature and to be called nature, only in so far as she ac- 
complishes this.' * Nature shall be the visible soul, soul 



SCHELLING. 289 

the invisible nature. And here, then, in the absolute 
identity of soul within us and of nature without us, must 
lie resolution of the problem as to the possibility of an 
external nature.' This thought that nature, matter, is 
the actuose unity of attraction and repulsion, in the same 
manner as mind is the unity of tendencies limiting and 
unlimited, that the repulsive force of matter corresponds 
to the positive unlimited element of mind, and the attrac- 
tive to the negative or limiting one — this idealistic de- 
duction of matter from the nature of the ego prevails 
throughout the writings of this period. Nature appears 
thus as the counterpart of the mind, and produced by the 
mind, only that the mind may, through its agency, at- 
tain to a pure perception of itself, to self- consciousness. 
Hence the series of grades in nature, in which all the 
stations of intellect on its way to self-consciousness are 
externally stereotyped. In the organized world espe- 
cially, it is that intellect contemplates its own self -pro- 
duction. For this reason there is something symbolical 
in everything organic ; every plant is a corporealized 
throb of the soul. The main peculiarities of organic 
growth, self -formation from within outwards, adaptation 
of means to ends, variety of interpenetration of form and 
matter, are all so many leading features of the mind. As 
in the mind there is an infinite effort towards self- 
organization, so also on the part of the external world 
must a similar tendency display itself. The entire sys- 
tem of the universe, therefore, is a species of organiza- 
tion, formed from a centre outwards, and rising ever 
from lower to higher stages. In accordance with this 
point of view, then, the great endeavour of the philo- 
sophy of nature must be to construe into unity the life of 
nature which has been sundered and dislocated by natural 
philosophy into an innumerable variety of forces. ' It 
is needless pains, taken by many people, to prove how 
wholly different in their actions fire and electricity are. 
Everybody knows that who has ever seen or heard any- 
thing of either. But in our inmost soul we strive to 
unity of system in knowledge ; we are impatient of the 
importunity that obtrudes a special principle for every 
special phenomenon ; and we believe ourselves only there 
to catch a sight of nature, where, in the greatest com- 
plexity of phenomena, we discover at the same time the 
greatest simplicity of law, and in the most lavish prodi- 
gality of effects the strictest economy of means. There- 

T 



290 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

fore attention is due to every thought, even though still 
crude and incomplete, that tends to the simplification of 
principles : if for nothing else, it at least serves for im- 
pulsion to inquiry, and to exploration of the hidden 
tracks of nature.* The scientific investigation of nature 
showed a particular bias during this period, to the adop- 
tion of a duality of forces as dominant there. In mecha- 
nics, Kant had given a theory of the antithesis of attrac- 
tion and repulsion ; in chemistry, the phenomena of 
electricity, abstractly conceived as positive and negative, 
were assimilated to magnetism ; in physiology, there 
was the antagonism of irritability and sensibility, etc. 
etc. As against these dualities, now, Schelling pressed 
forward to the unity of all opposites, of all dualities, not 
to the abstract unity, but to the concrete identity, the 
harmonious concert and co-operation of the whole hetero- 
geneous variety. The world is the actuose unity of a 
positive and a negative principle, * and these two oppos- 
ing forces, in conflict or in coalition, lead to the idea of 
a world-organizing, world-systematizing principle, the 
soul of the universe.' 

In the work on the World-Soul, Schelling made great 
progress towards an autonomic conception of nature. In 
such soul nature possesses a special, immanent, intelligible 
principle. The objectivity, the independent life of nature 
is recognised thereby in a manner that is impossible to the 
consistent idealism of Fichte. In this direction Schel- 
ling continued to advance, and distinguished presently 
with perfect consciousness transcendental philosophy and 
nature-philosophy as the two sides of philosophy in 
general. The addition to idealism of a complementary 
philosophy of nature was a decided advance on the part 
of Schelling beyond the position of the Wissenschqftslehre. 
"With it, then, — though Schelling still continued to em- 
ploy the method, and to believe himself true to the spirit, 
of Fichte, — we pass into a second stadium of his philo- 
sophizing. 

2. — Second Period : 

Distinction of Philosophy into Philosophies of Nature and 

of Mind (Spirit), 

This position is principally represented in the follow- 
ing works : First Sketch of a System of Nature- Philosophy, 
1799 ; Introduction to this work, 1799 ; articles in the 



SCHELLING. 291 

Journal of Speculative Physics, 2 vols., 1800-1801 ; Sys- 
tem of Transcendental Idealism, 1800. The two parts of 
philosophy Schelling distinguishes thus. All knowledge 
rests on the agreement of a subject with an object. 
Nature is the sum of objectivity, as the ego, or intelli- 
gence, is the sum of what is subjective. There are two 
ways of joining the two sides. Either assuming nature 
to be the prius, we ask, how does intelligence come to 
be added to it (that is, we resolve nature into pure de- 
terminations of thought — philosophy of nature); or as- 
suming the subject to be the prius, we ask, how are the 
objects produced from the subject — transcendental philo- 
sophy. All philosophy must endeavour to construct either 
intelligence out of nature, or nature out of intelligence. 
As transcendental philosophy subordinates the real to the 
ideal, so the philosophy of nature endeavours to deduce 
the ideal from the real. Both, however, are but the poles 
of one and the same knowledge, and they mutually seek 
each other : hence the one leads necessarily only to the 
other. 

(a.) Philosophy of Nature. — To philosophize on nature 
is as much as to create nature, to raise it out of the dead 
mechanism in which it appears sunk, to animate it as it 
were with freedom, and render possible for it its own 
spontaneous evolution. And what then is matter but 
the extinguished spirit ? Nature, accordingly, being but 
the visible organism of our minds, will be able to pro- 
duce nothing but what follows reason and law. But it 
is to destroy all idea of nature from the first, to assume 
the design exhibited by it to result from without, in con- 
sequence of the understanding of some other being acting 
on it. A perfect demonstration of the intelligible world 
as present in the laws and forms of the sensible world, 
and again a perfect comprehension of these laws and 
forms by means of the intelligible world, a demonstra- 
tion, consequently, of the identity of the worlds of nature 
and of thought — this it is the business of the philosophy 
of nature to accomplish. Its beginning, indeed, is im- 
mediate experience ; primarily we know nothing but 
from experience ; so soon, however, as I perceive the 
inner necessity of a proposition of experience, this propo- 
sition is already a priori. Empiricism enlarged into un- 
conditionedness is the philosophy of nature. The lead- 
ing ideas of this philosophy Schelling enunciates thus : — 
Nature is an oscillation between productivity and product, 



292 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

continually passing into definite forms and products, but 
equally also productively passing beyond these. This os- 
cillation points to a duplicity of the principles by which 
nature is maintained in constant activity and preserved 
from exhausting itself, and coming to term in precise 
products. Universal duality, then, must be the prin- 
ciple of all interpretation of nature. The first principle 
of a philosophical theory of nature is, to look for polarity 
and dualism everywhere. On the other hand, again, all 
consideration of nature must end in recognition of the 
absolute unity of the whole, a unity, however, which 
is to be discerned in nature only on one of its sides. 
Nature is, as it were, the instrument by which absolute 
unity eternally makes real all that has been pre-formed 
in the absolute mind. The absolute, then, is completely 
to be perceived in nature, although the world of exter- 
nality produces only in series, only successively and in 
infinite gradation, what is at once and eternally in the 
world of truth. Schelling treats the philosophy of nature 
in three sections : (1.) Proof is to be given that, in its 
original products, nature is organic ; (2.) the conditions 
of an inorganic nature are to be deduced ; and (3. ) the 
reciprocity of organic and inorganic nature is to be demon- 
strated. (1.) Organic nature is deduced thus : In an 
absolute sense nature is nothing but infinite activity, in- 
finite productivity. Were this to realize itself unchecked, 
there were produced at once with infinite velocity an ab- 
solute product, whereby empirical nature were unex- 
pressed. But if the latter is to be expressed, if there are 
to be finite products, then it will be necessary to assume 
that the productive activity of nature is checked by an 
opposed retarding activity, also existent in nature. A 
series of finite products is the consequent result. But 
the absolute productivity of nature aiming at an absolute 
product, these several products are only apparent pro- 
ducts, each is immediately transcended again by nature 
in order, through an infinite series of finite products, to 
satisfy the absoluteness of the inner productivity. In 
this eternal production of the finite, then, nature appears 
as a living antagonism of two opposed forces, one pro- 
moting and the other retarding. The latter acts also in 
infinite multiplicity ; the original productive force has to 
contend, not merely with a simple checking action, but 
with an infinity of reactions, which may be named the 
primitive qualities. Thus then every organic being is a 



SCHELLING. 293 

permanent expression of the conflict of the mutually dis- 
turbing and limiting actions of nature. And this, namely 
the primal limitedness and obstructedness of the forma- 
tive actions of nature, explains why each organization, 
instead of attaining to an absolute product, continues 
only to reproduce itself ad infinitum. Here, too, lies the 
importance of the relation of sex in the organic world. 
It fixes the products of the latter, it compels them ever 
to return to their own grade, and reproduce it only. In 
such reproduction, nature considers not individuals 
but the genus. The individual is repugnant to nature, 
whose desire is the absolute, and whose endeavour is ever 
to express it. The individual products, therefore, which 
exhibit the activity of nature as stationary, may be re- 
garded only as unsuccessful attempts to express the ab- 
solute. The genus is the end of nature, then, the indivi- 
dual but the means. So soon as the former is secure, 
nature abandons the latter, and works for its destruction. 
The dynamical gradation of organic nature is divided and 
classified by Schelling according to the three fundamen- 
tal functions of organized existences: — (a.) power of 
reproduction ; (b.) irritability ; (c.) sensibility. Those 
organisms stand highest in which sensibility is highest ; 
those lower in which irritability predominates ; lastly, 
reproduction appears in its greatest perfection where 
sensibility and irritability are almost lost. Nevertheless, 
these forces are woven into each other throughout the 
whole of nature, and consequently it is only a single 
organization which ascends there from plants to men. 
(2.) Inorganic nature is opposed to organic. The nature 
of the inorganic world is conditioned by that of the 
organic. If the constituents of the latter are productive, 
those of the former are unproductive. If in the one, it 
is only the genus that is fixed, in the other it is the indi- 
vidual, to which there belongs no reproduction of the 
genus. Inorganic nature, as opposed to organic, is 
necessarily a multiplicity of materials which are not 
related together otherwise than as being at once apart 
from and beside each other. In short, inorganic nature 
is mere mass — mass held together by a cause that is 
without, — gravity. Like organic nature, it has its grades 
nevertheless. What in organic nature is process of re- 
production, is in inorganic nature process of chemistry 
(as, for example, combustion) ; what is there irritability 
is here electricity ; what in the one is sensibility, the 



294 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

highest organic grade, is in the other magnetism, or the 
highest inorganic grade. And thus we have already (3.) 
the reciprocity of the organic and the inorganic worlds. The 
result to which every true philosophy of nature must 
come is, that the difference between organic and in- 
organic nature exists in nature only as an object, while 
nature again as originally productive soars over both. If 
the functions of organization are only possible under pre- 
supposition of an inorganic world without, the two 
worlds must have a common origin. We can only ex- 
plain this by assuming the existence of inorganic nature 
to imply a higher dynamic order of things to which it is 
subjected. There must be a third something that con- 
nects again organic with inorganic nature, a medium that 
3upports the continuity of both. The identity of an 
ultimate cause must be assumed, by which, as by a com- 
mon soul (world-soul), universal nature, organic and 
inorganic, is animated ; a single principle which, fluc- 
tuating between organic and inorganic nature, and pre- 
serving the continuity of both, constitutes the first cause 
of all alteration in the one, and the ultimate ground of all 
activity in the other. We have here the idea of a uni- 
versal organism. That it is a single organization which 
unites the organic and inorganic worlds we saw above 
in the parallelism of the gradations of both worlds. 
What in inorganic nature is the cause of magnetism, 
causes in organic nature sensibility ; and this latter is 
but a higher potence of the former. Duplicity from iden- 
tity, as it appears in the organic world in the form of sen- 
sibility, so in the inorganic world it appears in the form 
of magnetism. The organic world, then, is in this man- 
ner but a higher stage of the inorganic ; it is one and the 
same dualism which, from magnetic polarity up through 
the phenomena of electricity, and the differences of 
chemistry, presents itself also in the organic world. 

(b.) Transcendental Philosophy. — Transcendental philo- 
sophy is nature -philosophy made inward. The entire 
series, which we have described as it presents itself in 
the object, repeats itself as a successive development 
in the perceiving subject. The peculiarity of transcen- 
dental idealism, we are told in the preface, is, that it 
necessitates, so soon as it is accepted, a reproduction, as 
it were, of all knowledge from the beginning. What 
has long passed for established truth must submit to 
proof anew, and issue from it, in the event of success, at 



SCHELLWG. 295 

least in a quite other shape and form. The various parts 
of philosophy, and philosophy itself, must be exhibited 
in a single continuity as the advancing history of con- 
sciousness to which the deposits of experience serve for 
memorial and document. Exposition of this consists 
in a gradation of intellectual forms, by means of which 
the ego rises to consciousness in its highest potence. 
Exact statement of the parallelism between nature and 
intelligence is possible neither to transcendental philo- 
sophy nor to the philosophy of nature apart, but to both, 
united : the one is to be regarded as the necessary 
counterpart of the other. The principle of the sub- 
divisions of transcendental philosophy results from its 
problem, to reproduce anew all knowledge, and to test 
anew all prejudices and established opinions. The pre- 
judices of ordinary opinion are, in general, two : — (1.) 
That there exists without us, and independent of us, a 
world of things which is perceived as it is. To elucidate 
this prejudice is the problem of the first part of the 
transcendental philosophy (theoretical philosophy). (2.) 
That we can at will affect the objective world in accord- 
ance with ideas originating freely in us. The solution 
of this problem is practical philosophy. But these two 
problems involve us (3.) in a contradiction. How is 
mastery of the world of sense possible to thought, if in- 
telligence, in its very origin, is but the slave of the 
objects ? And, conversely, How is agreement possible 
between intelligence and things, if the latter are to be 
determined according to the former? The solution of 
this problem, the highest in transcendental philosophy, 
is the answer to the question, How are we at once to 
think intelligence as in subjection to objects, and objects 
as in subjection to intelligence ? This it is impossible 
to think, unless the faculty which produced the objective 
world be originally identical with that which expresses 
itself in will ; unless, therefore, the same faculty which 
in will is consciously productive, be in the production of 
the world, unconsciously productive. To prove this 
identity of the conscious and unconscious energies is the 
problem of the third part of the transcendental philo- 
sophy, or of the science of natural design and art. The 
three parts named completely correspond, consequently, 
to the three Kritiken of Kant— (1.) Theoretical philosophy \ 
beginning with the highest principle of knowledge, con- 
sciousness, develops thence the history of the latter in its 



296 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

principal epochs and stations, namely, sensation, percep- 
tion, productive perception (as producing matter), exter- 
nal and internal perception (with deduction of space, time, 
and the Kantian categories), abstraction (distinction of in- 
telligence from its own products), absolute abstraction or 
absolute will. The absolute act of will introduces us 
into (2.) Practical philosophy. Here the ego is no longer 
merely perceptive or unconscious, but it is consciously 
productive, or it realizes. As an entire nature originated 
in the primitive act of self-consciousness, a second nature 
will now be found to spring out of the second, or that of 
the free determination of self, and this second nature it 
is the object of practical philosophy to deduce. Schel- 
ling follows in the sequel almost entirely the doctrine of 
Fichte, but concludes with such admirable remarks on 
the philosophy of history as demonstrate an advance on 
Fighte. The moral order of the universe is not enough 
to insure the free action of intelligence its return. For 
this order is itself the product of the various subjects 
acting, and exists not where these act contrary to the 
moral law. It can neither be anything merely subjective, 
like the moral order of the universe, nor yet any mere 
submission to law on the part of objective nature, that 
insures free action its return, and brings it about that, 
from the completely lawless play of the freedom of the 
individuals, there issues at last, for the entire family 01 
free beings, an objective, rational, and harmonious result. 
A principle superior at once to subject and object must 
be the invisible root of this harmony of both which action 
demands : this principle is the absolute which is neither 
subject nor object, but the common root and the uniting 
identity of both. The free action of the genus of rational 
beings, realizing itself in that element of subjective and 
objective harmony which is the eternal production of the 
absolute, is history. History, consequently, is nothing 
but the realization of that perpetually progressive har- 
mony of subject and object, the gradual manifestation 
<ind revelation of the absolute. In this revelation there 
are three periods. The first is that in which power re- 
veals itself only as destiny, blindly holds down freedom, 
and destroys, coldly and unconsciously, all that is greatest 
and noblest. This is the tragic historical period, a period 
of brilliancy, but of the disappearance as well of the mar- 
vels of the old world and of its dynasties, of the noblest 
humanity that ever flourished. The second historical 



SCHELLING. 297 

period is that in which the former blind power manifests 
itself now as nature, and the obscure law of necessity ap- 
pears transformed into an open natural law, which com- 
pels the unbridled caprice of individual will to obey a 
plan of universal culture conducting in the end to a 
union of the peoples, to a universal state. This period 
begins with the advance of the mighty Roman republic. 
The third period will be that in which what was fate and 
nature in the former periods will manifest itself as pro- 
vidence, while the dominion of fate and nature will be 
seen to have been but the imperfect beginning of the 
gradual revelation of providence. When this period will 
begin it is impossible for us to say. But when it is, God 
is. (3.) Philosophy of Art — The problem of transcendental 
philosophy is the concord of object and subject. This 
concord was realized in history (with which practical 
philosophy closed) either not at all, or only as infinite 
progress. But now the ego must succeed in actually 
perceiving this concord or identity, which constitutes its 
deepest self. If now, then, all conscious action is design- 
ful, coalescence on its part with unconscious action is 
only possible in what, being designful in itself, has been 
without designfulness produced. Such a product is 
nature ; we have here the principle of all Teleology in 
which alone it is possible to find a solution of the given 
problem. What is distinctive of nature is that, though 
but blind mechanism, it is still designful, that it exhibits 
an identity of conscious subjective and of conscious ob- 
jective action : in it the ego beholds its own innermost 
self, which indeed only consists in this identity. But in 
nature the ego regards that identity as only objective and 
external to itself : it must be enabled to perceive it also 
as such that its principle lies in the ego itself. Such per- 
ception is artistic perception. As the product of nature 
is an unconscious product that is like to a conscious 
one, so the product of art is a conscious product that is 
like to an unconscious one. To teleology, then, we must 
add (Esthetics. The contradiction of the conscious and 
the unconscious, which without cessation perpetuates 
itself in history, and which is unconsciously resolved in 
nature, finds conscious resolution in the work of art. 
Here at last intelligence reaches a perfect perception of 
its own self. The feeling that accompanies this percep- 
tion is a feeling of infinite satisfaction : all contradictions 
are removed, all mysteries revealed. The unknown 



298 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

something that brings the objective and the conscious 
action into unexpected harmony, is nothing else than that 
absolute, that immutable identity which upholds exist- 
ence. The veil, with which it obscures itself for others, 
it lays aside for the artist, and impels him involuntarily 
to the production of his works. Thus art is the one and 
eternal revelation ; there is no other ; it is the miracle 
that must convince us of the absolute reality of that 
supreme principle which never becomes objective itself, 
but is the cause nevertheless of all that is objective. And 
so it is that art stands higher than philosophy, for only 
in art does the intellectual perception attain objectivity. 
Art is what is highest for the philosopher, for it opens as 
it were the holy of holies to him, where in eternal and 
primeval union there burns as in a flame what in nature 
and history is separated, and what in life and action as well 
as in thought must be eternally divided. From this we 
are enabled to understand too, that philosophy, as philo- 
sophy, can never acquire a universal authority. The single 
recipient of absolute objectivity is art, and with art con- 
sciously productive nature perfects and completes itself. 

The * transcendental idealism* is Schelling's last work 
written in the method of Fichte. Its principle is a 
decided advance on the position of Fichte. What to 
Fichte was an inconceivable limit of the ego, becomes 
for Schelling a necessary duplicity dependent on the 
simple nature of the ego. If Fichte contemplated the 
union of subject and object as only infinite asymptotical 
progress, Schelling contemplates its actual present reali- 
zation in the work of art. God, whom Fichte conceived 
only as object of a moral belief, has become for Schelling 
a direct object of aesthetic intuition. This his difference 
from Fichte could not long escape Schelling. It was im- 
possible for him to remain unconscious of the fact that 
he stood no longer on the level of subjective, but had 
passed to that of objective idealism. Having then ad- 
vanced beyond Fichte in his antithesis of transcendental 
philosophy and the philosophy of nature, it was only 
consequent that he should proceed a step further and place 
himself on the indifference-point of both, that he should, 
now adopt for principle the identity of ideality and reality, 
of thought and existence. This was the principle of 
Spinoza before him, and to this philosopher of identity, 
consequently, he felt himself powerfully attracted. In- 
stead now of the method of Fichte, he adopted Spinoza's 



SC 'HELLING. 299 

mathematical one, to which he ascribed the greatest evi- 
dence of demonstration. 

3. — Third Period : 

The Period of Spinozism or of the Indifference of the 
Ideal and Real. 

The principal writings of this period are : An Exposi- 
tion of my System of Philosophy (Journal of Speculative 
Physics, n. 2) ; the second and enlarged edition of the 
Ideas towards a Philosophy of Nature, 1803 ; the dialogue 
Bruno, or on the Divine and Natural Principle of Things, 
1802; Lectures on the Method of Academical Study, 1803; 
New Journal of Speculative Physics, 1802-3, three parts. 
Schelling's new position is perfectly characterized in the 
definition of reason, which he has placed at the beginning 
of the treatise first named : I call reason absolute reason, 
or reason so far as it is thought as total indifference of 
subjective and objective. The ability to think reason is to 
be presumed in every one ; to think it as absolute, or to 
reach the position required, the thinking subject must be 
abstracted from. For him who accomplishes this abstrac- 
tion reason immediately ceases to be something subjec- 
tive as it is generally conceived to be. Kay, it cannot 
be any longer thought even as something objective, for 
something objective, or something thought is only pos- 
sible in relation to a thinker. The abstraction, then, 
converts it into that true in-itself (virtuality, or absolute), 
which precisely coincides with the indifference-point of 
subjective and objective. The position of philosophy is 
the position of reason ; the cognition of philosophy is a 
cognition of things as they are in themselves, that is to 
say, as they are in reason. It is the nature of philo- 
sophy wholly to eliminate all succession in time and 
separation in space, all difference generally, imported 
into thought by imagination, and to see in things only 
that by which they express absolute reason, not, how- 
ever, so far as they are objects for such reflection as 
merely follows the laws of mechanism and in time. All 
is in reason, and besides reason there is nothing. Reason 
is the absolute. Any objections to this allegation can 
derive only from our being accustomed to see things not 
as they are in reason, but as they appear. Everything, 
that is, is essentially identical, and one with reason. It 
is not reason that makes an externality to itself, but 



300 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

only the false use of reason, which is conjoined with the 
inability to forget the subjective element within our- 
selves. Reason is absolutely owe and self -identical. The 
supreme law for the being of reason, and, as there is 
nothing but reason, for all being, is the law of identity. 
Between subject and object, then, one and the same 
absolute identity expressing itself in both, there is pos- 
sible, not a qualitative, but only a quantitative difference 
(a distinction of more or less), so that nothing is either 
simply object or simply subject, but in all things subject 
and object are united, although in various proportions 
with preponderance now of the one and now of the other. 
But the absolute being pure identity of subject and ob- 
ject, quantitative difference must fall outside of this 
identity, that is, into the finite. As the fundamental 
form of the infinite is A = A, so that of the finite is 
A = B (combinations, that is, of subject and object in 
various proportions). But in itself nothing is finite, for 
identity is the single in-itself. So far as there is differ- 
ence in individual things, identity exists in the form of 
indifference. Were we able to take in at a glance all 
that is, we should perceive in all a perfect quantitative 
equipoise of subjectivity and objectivity, or pure identity. 
In individual things, no doubt, there is a preponderance 
now on the one side and now on the other, but on the 
whole this is compensated. The absolute identity is ab- 
solute totality, the universe itself. In itself there is no 
individual existence or individual thing. Without tota- 
lity there is nothing in itself; and if anything is per- 
ceived outside of totality, this is possible only as result 
of an arbitrary separation of the individual from the 
whole, the product of reflection and the source of all 
errors. Essentially, there is the same absolute identity 
in every part of the universe. The universe consequently 
is to be conceived as a line, the centre of which is A = A, 

+ 
the one end A = B (that is a preponderance of subjec- 

+ 
tivity), and the other end A = B (or a preponderance of 
objectivity), so, nevertheless, that even in the extremes 
there is still relative identity. The one side is reality or 
nature, the other ideality. The real side develops three 
potences (a potence is a definite quantitative difference of 
subjectivity and objectivity). (1.) The first potence is 
matter and gravity — the greatest overweight of the ob- 



SCHELLING. 301 

ject. (2.) The second potence is light (A 2 ) — an inward 
(as gravity was an outward) perception of nature. Light 
is a higher movement of subjectivity. It is the absolute 
identity itself. (3.) The third potence is the common 
product of light and gravity, organization (A 3 ). Organi- 
zation is as original as matter. Inorganic nature as such 
does not exist : it is actually organized, and for the 
organization which proceeds from it as from the original 
seed. Each body's organization is this body's interior 
become outward ; earth itself becomes plant and animal. 
Organic does not form itself out of inorganic, but is from 
the first at least potential in it. What lies now before 
us apparently as inorganic matter is the residuum of the 
organic metamorphosis, what was unable to become orga- 
nic. The brain of man is the highest result of the entire 
organic metamorphosis of the earth. From the preced- 
ing, Schelling continues, it will have been seen as well 
that we maintain the internal identity of all things, and 
the potential presence of all in all, as that we regard so- 
called dead matter as only a plant-world and an animal- 
world asleep — a world, however, that animated by the 
being of absolute identity may still possibly awake at 
some future time. Schelling breaks off here, leaving the 
correspondent potences of the ideal sphere undeveloped. 
Elsewhere, however, we have these latter stated thus : 
(1.) Knowledge, the potence of reflection ; (2.) Action, 
the potence of subsumption ; (3.) Reason, the unity of 
reflection and subsumption. These three potences repre- 
sent : (1.) As the true, the assimilation of matter into 
form; (2.) As the good, the assimilation of form into 
matter ; (3.) As the beautiful, or the work of art, the 
absolute assimilation and unification of form and matter. 
Tn order to attain cognition of the absolute identity, 
Schelling even attempts to construct a new method. 
Neither the analytic nor the synthetic method appeared 
to him applicable for this purpose, both concerning finite 
cognition. Even the mathematical method he left off by 
degrees. The logical forms of common acceptation, nay, 
even the usual metaphysical categories, appeared to him 
now, too, as insufficient. As initial point of true cogni- 
tion, Schelling indicated intellectual perception. Percep- 
tion generally is an identifying of thought and being. 
When I perceive an object, the being of this object and 
my thought of it are for me absolutely the same thing. 
But in ordinary perception unity is assumed between 



302 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

thought and some particular sensuous existence. In the 
perception of reason, intellectual perception, on the con- 
trary, it is the absolute subject-object, that is perceived, 
or identity is assumed between thought and being in 
general, all being. Intellectual perception is absolute 
cognition, and absolute cognition must be thought as 
such that in it thinking and being are no longer opposed. 
Intellectually to perceive directly within yourself the 
same indifference of ideality and reality which you per- 
ceive, as it were, projected out of you in time and space, 
this is the beginning and the first step in philosophy. 
This veritably absolute cognition is wholly and solely in 
the absolute itself. That it cannot be taught is evident. 
We do not see, either, why philosophy should be under 
any obligation to concern itself with this inability. It is 
advisable, rather, on all sides, to isolate from common 
consciousness the approach to philosophy, and to leave 
open neither footpath nor highroad from the one to the 
other. Absolute cognition, like the truth it contains, has 
no true contrariety without itself, and admits not of being 
demonstrated to any intelligence ; neither does it admit 
of being contradicted by any. It was the endeavour of 
Schelling, then, to reduce intellectual perception to a 
method, and this method he named construction. Of 
this method, the possibility and necessity depended on 
this, that the absolute is in all, and all is the absolute. 
The construction itself was nothing else than a demon- 
stration of how, in every particular relation or object, the 
whole is absolutely expressed. Philosophically to con- 
strue an object, then, is to point out that in it the entire 
inner structure of the absolute repeats itself. 

In accordance with the position of identity or indiffer- 
ence, Schelling attempted an encyclopaedic construction 
of all the philosophical disciplines in his Lectures on the 
Method of Academical Study (delivered 1802, appeared 
1803). Under the form of a critical review of the uni- 
versity curriculum, they afford a summary and connected 
but popular statement of his philosophy. The part most 
worthy of remark in them is the attempt at an historical 
construction of Christianity. The incarnation of God is 
an eternal incarnation. The eternal Son of God, born of 
the being of the father of all things, is the finite itself, as 
it is in the eternal perception of God. Christ is only the 
historical, sensuously-seen pinnacle of the incarnation ; 
as an individual he is quite intelligible from the circum • 



SCHILLING. 303 

stances of the period. God being eternally independent 
of all time, it is inconceivable that he should have as- 
sumed human nature in any specific moment of time. 
Christianity, as it is in time, exoteric Christianity, corre- 
sponds not to its idea, and has only to expect its comple- 
tion. A main obstacle to this completion was and is the 
so-called Bible, which besides, as regards true religious 
substance, is inferior to some other religious writings. (!) 
A new birth of esoteric Christianity, or a new and higher 
religion, in which philosophy, religion, and poetry shall 
be fused into unity, this must be the product of the 
future. The last statement contains already a hint of 
the 'revelation-philosophy,' and of the Johannine era 
announced in it. Similar other allusions occur also in 
the same work. Thus Schelling places in the beginning 
of history a sort of golden age. It is inconceivable, he 
says, that man as he now appears, should have been of 
himself able to raise himself from instinct to conscious- 
ness, from animality to rationality. The present race of 
men must have been preceded, then, by another, immor- 
talized in the ancient legend under the figure of gods and 
heroes. An origin for religion and civilisation is intelli- 
gible only in the lessons of superior natures. I hold 
civilisation to have been the primal condition of man- 
kind, and the institution of states, of sciences, of reli- 
gion, and of arts, to have been contemporaneous, or 
rather one and the same : these things, indeed, were not 
then veritably sundered, but in perfect interpenetration, 
as they will be again in the last days. Schelling is only 
consistent, then, when he regards the symbols of mytho- 
logy, which we find to be historically first, as revelations 
of supreme cognition — and here, again, we have a step 
to the subsequent ( philosophy of mythology. ' 

The mystical element, which we find expressed in 
these historical views, asserts itself henceforward more 
and more in Schelling. This mystical tendency was 
partly the result of his unsuccessful attempt to find an 
appropriate form, an absolute method, for the expres- 
sion of his philosophical ideas. All nobler mysticism 
depends on the impossibility of adequately expressing 
infinite matter in a logical form. And so it was that 
Schelling, after he had restlessly flung himself into every 
method, soon sickened of that of construction also, and 
henceforth completely abandoned himself to the bound- 
less course of his own phantasy. Partly, again, hia 



304 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

philosophical views had gradually undergone a transfor- 
mation. From the speculative science of nature he turned 
more and more to the philosophy of mind, and his defi- 
nition of the absolute changed accordingly. If the ab- 
solute had hitherto been to him the indifference of ideality 
and reality, preference was now given to the former in 
reference to the latter, and ideality became the funda- 
mental attribute of the absolute. Ideality is the prius, 
ideality, secondly, determines itself within itself to rea- 
lity, which as such consequently is only third. The for- 
mer harmony of spirit and nature is broken up, and 
matter appears as the negative of spirit. In thus distin- 
guishing from the absolute the universe as its antitype, 
Schelling has decidedly abandoned the position of Spino- 
zism and passed to another. 

4. — Fourth Period : 

The Mystic or Neo-Platonic Form of the Philosophy of 

Schelling. 

The writings of this period are : — Philosophy and 
Religion, 1804 ; Exposition of the True Relation of 
Nature- Philosophy to the amended Fichtian Views, 1806^ 
Annals of Medicine (co-edited with Marcus), 1805-1808. 
From the position of indifference, as has been said, the 
absolute and the universe were identical, nature and 
history were immediate manifestations of the absolute. 
But now Schelling accentuates the difference between 
them, and in order most strikingly to express the sepa- 
ratedness of the world, he quite neo-Platonically repre- 
sents it, in the first work named, as originating in a 
rupture, in a downfall from the absolute. From the 
absolute to the actual there is no continuous transition ; 
the origin of the material world is only conceivable as a 
complete break-off from the absolute by direct separa- 
tion. The absolute is the only reality ; finite things are 
not real. The existence of the latter, then, cannot de- 
pend on a communication of reality made to them by 
the absolute, but on their very distance, on their very 
downfall from the absolute. The reconciliation of this 
downfall, God's completed realization, is the goal of 
history. To this idea, there are then added some othei 
conceptions of a neo-Platonic complexion. Thus we have 
the myth of Psyche falling from intellectuality to sense, 
and this fall even Platonically described as the punish- 



SCHELLING. 305 

ment of self n ess. Then we have the kindred myth of a 
palingenesia and migration of souls, which souls, accord- 
ing as they have more or less laid aside self here below, 
and purified themselves into identity with the infinite, 
either begin a higher life on better stars, or, satu- 
rated with matter, are driven down into still lower 
regions. Particularly neo-Platonic are the high estima- 
tion and mystico-symbolical interpretation of the Greek 
mysteries (begun even in the Bruno), as well as the 
opinion that religion, if it would preserve uninjured its 
pure ideality, can never exist otherwise than esoterically 
or in the form of mysteries. The same thought of a 
loftier unification of religion and philosophy pervades 
the whole of the writings of this period. All true experi- 
ence, says Schelling, is religious. The existence of God 
is an empirical truth, nay, the ground of all experience. 
Religion, indeed, is not philosophy ; but a philosophy 
which should not unite in holy harmony religion with 
science, were certainly none. Something higher than 
science I certainly do know. And if to science there 
are only two ways open, that of analysis or abstraction 
and that of synthetic deduction, then all science of the 
absolute is denied. Speculation is the whole — vision, con- 
templation of everything, that is, in God. Science itself 
is valuable only so far as it is speculative, so far as it is 
contemplation of God as he is. A time will come, how- 
ever, when the sciences will more and more disappear, 
and immediate cognition assert itself. Only in the 
highest science does the mortal eye close, and then it is 
no longer man that sees, but eternal sight itself that has 
come to see in him. 

With such theosophical views, Schelling was naturally 
directed to the older mystics, whose writings he now 
began to study. In his polemic against Fichte, Schel- 
ling replies to the reproach of mysticism as follows : — 
Among the learned of one or two centuries past, there 
was a tacit understanding not to go beyond a certain 
point, where the genuine spirit of science was left to the 
unlearned. These, because they were unlearned, and had 
iDcurred the envy of the learned, were styled visionaries. 
But many a professed philosopher might be glad to 
exchange his entire rhetoric for the fulness of heart and 
soul that is present in the writings of these very vision- 
aries. I, then, would not be ashamed of the name of 
such a visionary. Nay, I will endeavour to give a foun- 
u 



306 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

dation to the reproach : hitherto I have not properly 
studied the writings of these men, negligence has been 
the cause. Schelling failed not to make good these 
words. And it was especially to the kindred Jacob 
Bohm that he henceforward more and more directed him- 
self. Study of Bohm, indeed, is already apparent in the 
writings before us. One of Schelling's most celebrated 
works (and which appeared soon afterwards), that on free- 
will (Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human 
Free-willy 1809), is altogether built on Bohm. With it 
begins the last period of Schelling's philosophizing. 

5. — Fifth Period : 

Attempt at a Theogony and Cosmogony in agreement 

with Jacob Bohm. 

With Bohm, Schelling had much in common. To both 
speculative cognition was a sort of immediate perception. 
Both employed a mixture of abstract and sensuous forms, 
a medley of logical precision and phantastic colouring. 
Both were alike, finally, in a speculative relation. A lead- 
ing thought with Bohm was the self-diremption of the ab- 
solute. Taking the divine substance as at first the form- 
less unqualified infinite and incomprehensible, that which 
was foundationless, Bohm conceived it further, in the 
feeling of its own abstract infinite being, to shrink into 
finitude, into the ground or centre of nature, where in 
their dark torture-chamber, the qualities separate from 
each other, where at last from the hard contrition of these 
qualities the lightening springs, which then, as spirit, or 
principle of light, dominates and illuminates the strug- 
gling powers of nature, until God, raised by the basis 
from his unbasedness, or by the ground from his un- 
groundedness, into the light of the spirit, lives and moves 
in an eternal realm of bliss. This theogony of Bohm's is 
strikingly in harmony with the present views of Schelling. 
As Bohm conceived the absolute to be the primal formless 
baselessness, or groundlessness, Schelling, as we have 
seen already, figured it as indifference. As Bohm too 
proceeded to distinguish this all-unbasedness from the 
basis or nature, and from God as the light of the spirit, 
so Schelling apprehends the absolute now as what, 
externalizing itself, returns from this self-externaliza- 
tion into a higher unity with its own self again. We 
have thus already indicated the three moments in the 



SCHELLING. 307 

history of God which constitutes the interest of the work 
on free-will already named : — (1.) God as indifference, or 
as primal baselessness, foundationlessness, groundless- 
ness, the unfounded void ; (2.) God as diremption into 
existence and ground (basis), ideal and real; (3.) Con- 
ciliation of this diremption and transformation of the 
original indifference into identity. The first moment in 
the divine life is that of pure indifference or distinction- 
lessness. This that precedes all existence may be named 
the primal ground or unground (groundlessness, founda- 
tionlessness). The unground is no product of the anti- 
theses, nor are these implicit in it, but it is a special 
being devoid of all antithesis, and therefore such that it 
possesses no predicate but predicatelessness. Real and 
ideal, darkness and light, can never as antitheses be pre- 
dicated of the unground : only as non-antitheses, in a 
neither the one nor the other, is it possible to enunciate 
them of it. From this indifference now duality breaks 
forth : the unground parts into two equally eternal begin- 
nings, in order that ground and existence may become 
one in love, or in order that the lifeless and indefinite 
indifference may rise into the living and definite identity. 
As there is nothing before or besides God, God must have 
the ground of his existence within himself. But this 
ground is not merely logical as a notion, but real, as a 
something actual and to be distinguished from existence 
in God : this ground is nature in God, distinguishable 
from God, but inseparable from God. In it, then, is 
neither understanding nor will, but only the craving for 
them ; it is the longing to give birth to itself. But the 
ground longingly moving thus, like a heaving sea, in 
obedience to some dark and indefinite law, there arises 
in God himself, correspondent to this first stirring of the 
divine existentiality in the ground, an inner reflexive 
perception in which — no object being possible for it but 
God himself — God beholds himself in his own image. 
This perception is God born in God himself, the eternal 
Word in God (Gospel of John, i.), which rises on the 
night of the ground like light, and bestows understand- 
ing on its dark longing. This understanding united with 
the ground becomes free creative will. Its work is the 
setting in order of nature, the previously lawless ground ; 
and from this transformation of the real by the ideal 
there comes the creation of the world. In the evolution 
of the world there are two stadia: — (1.) The birth of light, 



308 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

or the gradual development of nature up to man; (2.) 
The birth of spirit, or man's development in history. (1.) 
The development of nature in grades depends on a conflict 
of the ground with the understanding. Originally the 
ground endeavoured to shut itself in to its own self, 
and independently to produce all from its own self alone ; 
but its products without understanding were without 
stability and fell again to the groimd, a creation which 
we still behold in the extinct plants and animals of the 
prehistoric world. But even in the sequel the ground 
yields only gradually to the understanding, and every 
such step towards light is marked by a new class of be- 
ings. In every natural existence there are, therefore, 
two principles to be distinguished : first, the dark prin- 
ciple, through which natural existences are separated 
from God, and possess a particular will ; secondly, the 
divine principle of understanding, or of the universal 
will. In irrational natural existences, these two prin- 
ciples, however, are not yet moulded together into unity, 
but the particular will is mere rage and greed in them, 
whilst the universal will, quite apart from the individual 
will, is operative as mere external natural power, as con- 
trolling instinct. Only (2.) in man are the two prin- 
ciples united as they are united in the absolute. But in 
God they are inseparable, while in man they are not only 
separable, but must separate, in order that there may be 
a difference of man from God, and that God, as opposed 
to man, may be revealed as that which he is, as unity of 
both principles, as spirit that subdues the difference, as 
love. Just this separableness of the universal and par- 
ticular wills is the possibility of good and evil. The good 
is the subordination of the particular to the universal 
will, and the inversion of this the true relation is evil. 
In this possibility of good and evil, man's free will con- 
sists. Empirical man, however, is not free ; his whole 
empirical condition is determined by an intelligible act 
antecedent to time. As man acts now, he must act ; 
but nevertheless he is free in act, because from eternity 
he has freely made himself what he now necessarily is. 
From the very beginning of creation, the will of the self- 
substantiating ground has brought along with it the self- 
will of the creature for the production of the antithesis, 
in the subjugation of which God may realize himself as 
the reconciling unity. In this universal excitation of 
evil, man has involved himself in self-will and selfishness ; 



SCHELLWG. 309 

hence in all men evil as nature, and yet in each as his 
own free act. The history of man depends, on the great 
scale, on this conflict of self-will and universal will, as the 
history of nature on the conflict of the ground and the 
understanding. The various stages which evil as histo- 
rical power describes in battle with love, constitute the 
periods of universal history. Christianity is the middle- 
point of history. In Christ the principle of love became 
personally opposed to evil in the person of man. Christ 
was the mediator in order to restore to its highest position 
the connexion of creation with God ; for only the personal 
can be the saviour of the personal. The end of the world 
is the reconciliation of self-will and love, the dominion of 
universal will, so that God is all in all. The indifference of 
the beginning is then raised into the absolute identity. 

In his reply to Jacobi (1812), Schelling gave a further 
justification of this his idea of God. He endeavours to 
repel Jacobi's accusation of naturalism, by demonstrating 
that the true idea of God is a union of naturalism and 
theism. Naturalism would think God as ground (imma- 
nent) ; theism as cause of the world (transcendent) : the 
truth is the union of both characters. God is at once 
cause and ground. It nowise contradicts the notion of 
God that he should be conceived, so far as he reveals 
himself, to proceed out of himself from imperfection to 
perfection, to develop himself : imperfection is perfec- 
tion itself, but as in process of becoming. The stages of 
the process are necessary, in order to exhibit on all sides 
the fulness of perfection. Unless there be a dark ground, 
a nature, a negative principle in God, there can be no 
talk of a consciousness of God. As long as the God of 
modern theism remains a simply single being, that is to 
be supposed purely essential, but is in fact only essence- 
less ; as long as there is not recognised in God an actual 
duality, and a limitative and negative power that is 
opposed to the expansive and affirmative one, so long will 
the denial of a personal God be but scientific candour. 
It is universally and absolutely impossible to think a be- 
ing possessed of consciousness who has not been brought 
into limitation by a negative power within himself — as 
universally and absolutely impossible as to think a circle 
without a centre. 

Schelling's letter to Eschenmayer, in the Universal 
Journal by Germans for Germans, may be regarded as an 
elucidation of the views contained in the work on free 



310 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, 

will, and in the reply to Jacobi. Tn this letter he ex- 
presses himself more plainly than he had previously done 
as to what is to be understood by ground, and as to his 
justification for speaking of a ground in God. After this 
communication, there occurred a pause in the literary 
activity of Schelling. It was publicly rumoured, indeed, 
that the printing of an unusually great work, entitled 
The Ages of the World, had begun ; but also again that 
Schelling had recalled and destroyed the proofs. The 
title had seemed to give promise of a philosophy of his- 
tory ; and the description of the short essay On the 
Gods of Samothrace (1815), as supplementary to the 
work itself, made it seem likely, at the same time, that 
in it great stress would be laid on the development of 
the religious consciousness. Now, indeed, that in Spel- 
ling's collected works we have the printed treatise itself, 
we see that the Past, that is to say, what is to be thought 
as previous to nature, constitutes the theme of the first 
book (existent in the eighth volume of the collected 
works, in the form which Schelling may have given to 
it about the year 1815) ; that it is nature itself that, 
under the title of the ' Present,' is to be considered the 
subject of the second book ; and that, lastly, surmises of 
the Future were the material of the third book. For the 
rest, it is evident that at least the main features of the 
later doctrine of potences had even then taken fixed 
shape in the mind of Schelling. A quite extraordinary 
sensation was produced — Stahl and Sengler having 
called public attention to the new turn in the views of 
Schelling — by the preface which he prefixed in the year 
1834 to H. Becker's translation of a work of Cousin's. 
This not only because he spoke in it so bitterly of 
Hegel, who, he said, had quite misunderstood the sense 
of the Identitatssystem, but because he now openly de- 
clared that, while his entire earlier system formed but 
one half, and that the negative one, of philosophy, there 
required to be added, as complement to it, the second or 
positive half, in which the method should not be any 
longer one of pure a priori construction, but should adopt 
in part the process so exclusively applied by empiricism. 
In a similar manner, but with somewhat less bitterness 
to Hegel, he expressed himself in the address with which 
he opened his lectures at Berlin in 1841. And as a con- 
viction soon obtained that Schelling would hardly bring 
himself to lay his Berlin discourses before a wider circle, 



SC HELLING. 311 

attempts were made — after publication of the extracts 
of Frauenstadt and others, but especially of the report of 
Dr. Paulus, which latter Schelling's own action for piracy 
seemed to authenticate — partly to expound and partly 
critically to judge the new doctrine. That these were 
only partially correct appeared, when, after Schelling's 
death, his sons made public, as well the introduction to the 
Philosophy of Mythology as the Philosophy of Revelation. 
These works enable us to form a pretty complete concep- 
tion of the latest shape which philosophy assumed with 
Schelling. Quite, namely, as in the work on free-will, and 
the other works immediately subsequent, that, which in 
his third period had been named the absolute indifference, 
is designated as the prius of nature and mind, nay as the 
prius of God, so far as it is that in God which is not (yet) 
God. Then it is shown how from this pre-notion of God, 
substituted by pantheism for the usual notion, the true 
notion of God is reached, the notion, that is, of true 
monotheism, which supplants pantheism by rendering 
pantheism latent within it. In this progression of the 
notion of God, there are distinguished now three moments, 
or, as Schelling, in his earlier manner, prefers to name 
them, potences : first, the ability-to-be (das Sein-kon- 
nende), which, as it not yet is, is characterized by the 
sign minus, and usually named — A. It is ground or even 
nature in God, the dark that awaits illumination, what 
was called in the work on free-will the hunger for exist- 
ence, nameable also the subject of being or potential 
being (Ansichsein). To this mere ability to be there stands 
opposed as its pure contrary (consequently, +A), pure 
being which is without all potentiality (Konnen) ; which, 
as the former was mere subject, is not even subject, but 
only predicate and object ; which, too, as the former was 
a self and within itself, is rather what is without itself 
or external to itself, and not what denies (or withdraws) 
itself. Both constitute the presupposition to — what is 
excluded by them — the third, ± A, in which the in-itself 
and the without-itself (potentiality and actuality), or 
subjectivity and objectivity, unite, so that it may be 
named what is by itself (what is at home with itself), 
what is master of itself. This third now, which, as — A, 
has the first, and therefore the best claim to the predi- 
cate of being, is most appropriately designated spirit. 1 

1 That the non-being — A should now be alluded to as specially 
being is sufficiently perplexing ; but, in addition, the sentence itaelf 



312 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

God, as unity of these three, is still far from being tri- 
une, but is as yet only the all- one, in which notion there 
lies but the root of the Trinity. The progress to the 
Trinity, at the same time also to the universe that is dis- 
tinguished from God, proceeds in this way that — A, 
which was non-being, is made explicit as such. To this, 
however, — because only what is as non-being is capable 
of being made explicit, — it is necessary to presuppose 
that — A was previously explicit as being, but was over- 
mastered by the opposing + A. The appearance of this 
contradiction (Spannung), which follows not from the 
nature, but from the will of God, has — as in it properly 
the relation of the two potences has reversed itself ( — A 
having become being, and + A potentiality, or ability to 
be, or power) — for its product the conversion of the 
original relation, and so of the unum versum (universe) ; 
bat just so it serves also to this, that, above both as 
now transformed, ±A is God as self -possessing actual 
spirit : theogonic and cosmogonic processes here fall 
together. The latter manifests a series of stages in 
which the various relations of the two potences are 
demonstrated by the philosophy of nature. In the 
human consciousness, which is the last term of the 
series, the contention of the potences reaches its end. 
The powers from whose conflict the world arose, repose 
in the inner of the human spirit, which for this very 
reason is really the microcosm. Through the Prome- 
thean deed of the apprehension of self as ego, the hitherto 
only ideal world becomes, in externality to God, a real 
one, the vocation of which is to subordinate itself to 
what it left ; whereby naturally this latter, previously 
transmundane, becomes now supramundane. The path 
to this consummation describes the various progressive 
relations of the ego, which, referring itself theoretically 
to the natural, and practically to the moral law, and, 
freed by the latter, elevates itself into an artistic and 
contemplative enjoyment, in which that becomes object 
for it that is characterized by Aristotle as the thinking 
of thinking, and by later philosophy as the subject-object, 
— the final cause of the world, or God as first principle of 
the world. 

The course here is designated by SchelHng as the 

is, either in pointing or otherwise, ungrammatical. As the smallest 
emendation possible, a comma has been added. The reader should 
know that this and the next paragraph are not by Schwegler.— See 
Annotation. — T. 



SC HELLING. 313 

progress towards God. Beginning with, the first con- 
ditions of all-being, passing to the action of the potences 
in production of a divided and in itself graduated being, 
proceeding to the self-assertion of the ego that thereby 
isolates itself from God, the result of the doctrine is that 
the ego declares itself as not the first principle, and sub- 
ordinates itself to the isolated God, whom, in the end, 
it acknowledges as this principle. In the end : hitherto, 
then, we have philosophized towards God, and therefore 
without God ; it has been shown that none of the stages 
hitherto considered, neither knowledge of nature, nor 
life in the state, nor contemplative absorption, yields 
an ultimate satisfaction ; philosophy, therefore, can be 
named, because of this negative result, only negative 
philosophy. As hitherto wholly conditioned by thought 
too, it may be fitly named rational philosophy. But 
thought being without power to create reality, to bestow 
existence, the end of rational philosophy is only God as 
idea. But the power that fails thought is possessed by 
will. Will postulates an active God, lord of all being, 
who will practically resist the schism that has actually 
appeared. This longing for an actual God is religion, 
and philosophy, in receiving religion for its object, 
assumes quite a new character : it is become positive 
philosophy. It has no longer its previous rational char- 
acter, when it considered only how the problem was pos- 
sibly to be thought ; but as religion roots in the action 
of free-will its aim now is to explain religion as it actually 
occurs, and to show how all relates itself when God, con- 
ceived as only found at the end of the negative philosophy, 
is made principle with derivation of all from him, whereas 
previously the course had been to him. The philosophy 
of religion, which is not to be confounded with a so-called 
religion of reason, has for object partly the incomplete, 
partly the completed religion. It is first, then, Philo- 
sophy of Mythology, and then Philosophy of Revelation. 
In the former Schelling attempts to show, how it is to be 
explained that men, not otherwise insane, should have 
submitted themselves to ideas which represented the 
sacrifice of a son, for example, as duty ; and, again, how 
it is possible that such ideas should appear, even from a 
Christian point of view, preferable to complete irreligi- 
ousness. Schelling intimates that the forces dominating 
these men and people, and regarded by them as God, must, 
from the point of view of the highest religion, be re- 



314 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

cognised as at least moments in God. The primitive form 
of religion, namely, which may, because no polytheism is 
yet present, and humanity is pervaded by God, be called 
Monotheism (but an abstract one) is followed by the 
crisis which is one with the progression of the nations, 
and in which there repeats itself in the consciousness of 
man, the same process of the potences which (in exter- 
nality and priority to consciousness), gave rise to the 
natural stages. Hence the parallelism between these lat- 
ter and the mythological stages, which has led many to 
see in mythology only a disguised physical philosophy. 
Philosophy shows now that the mythological process 
consists in the individual potences taking possession of 
consciousness, instead of the all-one as previously in 
primitive monotheism, and the first step is that where 
consciousness knows itself as under dominion of the re- 
volutions of the heavens, a form which may be named 
astral religion or Sabeism. Mythology, reaching, as 
Greek, its flourishing point, we find there again all the 
notions of the earlier stages. Thus Uranus is the 
god of the consciousness, which appears first in the 
process. The second stage, on which the first potence 
( — A) is reduced to passivity by the second ( + A ), is 
represented in Greek mythology by the emasculation of 
Uranus. In this reference it is characteristic that the 
Greek Herodotus, where he mentions this moment of the 
mythological process (a moment stereotyped among the 
Babylonians and Arabians) introduces Urania and her 
son Dionysus. On this second stage stand now very 
various religions, as well those which wholly merge them, 
selves in the mythological process (Phoenician, Egyptian, 
Indian, etc.), as also those, like Budhism and the dualism 
of the Persians), which would fix the process on certain 
points. The Greek displays the highest stage of mytho- 
logy : nay, in the mysteries, in which it begins to make 
its peculiar nature clear to itself, it properly transcends 
itself, and so it is that the consideration of the mysteries 
is the best introduction to the philosophy of revelation. 
The special problem of the latter is to explain from its 
premises the person of Christ which is the matter proper 
of all Christianity. The action of Christ before his be- 
coming man, his incarnation, and, lastly, the mediation so 
accomplished, are considered ; the point of view being 
always held fast, however, that the mythological process 
is the presupposition and in the end the presage of what 



TRANSITION TO HEGEL. 315 

in Christ becomes actual. The completion of his work 
prepares the way for the third potence, spirit, through 
the action of which the Church, as explication of Christ, 
exists. The three periods of the Church are prefigured 
by the principal apostles, Peter, Paul, and John. The two 
tirst periods, Catholicism and Protestantism, have already 
elapsed : the third, the Christianity of John, is now ap- 
proaching. 

There is indisputably something grandiose in this at- 
tempt to comprehend the whole process of the world, and 
of its inner and outer history, as the self -mediation of 
God with himself, and to unite pantheism and theism in 
the higher notion of God as at once free and in subjection 
to development (' monotheism'). How closely this last 
phase of the philosophy of Schelling approaches the 
Hegelian which in its way also adopts for principle the 
notion of a process of the absolute through mediation of 
negation, will appear at once from the statement of 
Hegel, to which we proceed. 



XLIV. — Transition to Hegel. 

THE radical defect of the philosophy of Schelling, as 
seen in its development with relation to Fichte, is 
the abstractly objective manner in which it conceived 
the absolute. This was pure indifference, identity ; 
there was (1.) no possibility of transition from it to the 
definite, the real ; and hence Schelling ; afterwards fell 
into a complete dualism between the absolute and the 
world of reality. In it (2.) mind had been obliged to 
yield its supremacy to nature ; or the one was equated 
with the other, and the pure objective indifference of 
ideality and reality was placed above both, that is, then, 
above the former. From reflection on this one-sidedness, 
the Hegelian philosophy arose. Hegel, in opposition to 
Fichte and agreement with the position of Schelling, held 
that it is not anything individual, not the ego, that is 
the prim of all reality, but, on the contrary, something 
universal, a universal which comprehends within it every 
individual. But then he conceived this universal not as 
indifference, but rather as development, as a universal in 
which the principle of difference is immanent, and which 
uncloses itself into the entire wealth of the actuality ex- 
hibited by the worlds of mind and of matter. Nor is the 



316 HISTOBY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

absolute to Hegel merely something objective, as it were 
the negative extinction of being and of thinking, of real- 
ity and ideality, in a neutral third : the universal, that 
underlies all, is rather only one of the terms of this dis- 
junction, the ideal one. The idea is the absolute, and all 
actuality is only a realization of the idea. Above there 
is nothing higher than the idea, and without there is no- 
thing further : it is the idea that actualizes itself in every 
individual of the total whole. The universe is no in- 
difference of ideality and reality ; rather it is that reality 
into the infinite forms of which the idea (in order not 
to be a mere unreal abstraction), unfolds itself, without, 
however, losing itself in them, but, on the contrary, with 
return from them back into its own self in the form of a 
rational soul, and so, as conscious, self -thinking idea, tc 
exist in its true form, in a form adequate to its own 
inner and essential being. Thus Hegel restores to 
thought its own right. Thought is not one existential 
form of the absolute beside others; it is the absolute 
itself in its concrete unity of self ; it is the idea come 
back to itself — the idea that knows itself to be the truth 
of nature and the power in it. The Hegelian philosophy 
constitutes thus, then, the diametrical opposite to the 
philosophy of Schelling that preceded it. If the latter 
became ever more and more realistic, more and more 
Spinozistic, more and more mystic, more and more 
dualistic, the former, on the contrary, was again idealis- 
tic, rationalistic, a pure monism of thought, a pure 
reconciliation of the actual and the intellectual. If 
Schelling substituted objective for subjective idealism, 
Hegel supersedes both by an absolute idealism, that is 
again to subordinate the natural to the intellectual ele- 
ment, but equally at the same time to embrace both as in- 
wardly one and identical. 

As regards form, the Hegelian philosophy is in its method 
equally essentially distinguished from ito predecessor. 
The absolute is to Hegel not being (a definite, fixed some- 
thing), but process, explicitation of differences and anti- 
theses, which, however, are not independent, or self- 
subsistently opposed to the absolute, but constitute, 
individually and collectively, only moments within the 
self-evolution of the absolute. This necessitates a de- 
monstration, then, that the absolute is possessed within 
itself of a principle of progress from difference to differ- 
ence, which differences still form only moments within 



TRANSITION TO HEGEL. 317 

it. It is not we who are to bring differences into the 
absolute, but it is the absolute itself which must produce 
them; whilst they, for their parts, must again resolve 
themselves into the whole, or demonstrate themselves as 
mere moments. This it is the object of the Hegelian 
method to make good. Its position is : every notion has 
in itself its own opposite, its own negation ; is one-sided, 
and pushes on into a second, which second, the opposite 
of the first, is as per se equally one-sided with the first. 
In this way it is seen that both are only moments of a 
third notion, which, the higher unity of its two prede- 
cessors, contains in itself both, but in a higher form that 
combines them into unity. This new notion, again, once 
assumed as established, similarly demonstrates itself as 
but a one-sided moment, that also pushes forward to 
negation, and through negation to a higher unity, and so 
on. This self -negation of the notion is to Hegel the 
genesis of all differences and antitheses, which, for their 
parts, are never anything fixed or self-subsistent, as the 
reflecting understanding supposes, but only fluent mo- 
ments of the immanent movement of the notion. And 
so it is also with the absolute itself. The universal, 
which is the ground of everything particular, is such 
only in this way, that it (the universal), as such, is only 
something one-sided, and is of itself impelled into nega- 
tion of its abstract universality by means of concreter 
particularity (definiteness). The absolute is not a simple 
one something, but a system of notions which owe their 
origin just to this self -negation of the original universal. 
This system of notions is then collectively in itself again 
an abstractum, that is impelled forward into negation of 
its merely notional (ideal) being, into reality, into the 
real self-subsistence of the differences (nature). But here 
again, in nature, there is the same one-sidedness of being 
but moment and not itself the whole, and thus, therefore, 
the self subsistence of the real element also resolves itself, 
and this element is resumed into the universality of the 
notion in the form of self-consciousness, of thinking spirit, 
which comprehends and unites within itself both notional 
(logical) and real (natural) being, in a higher ideal unity 
of the universal and the particular. This immanent 
spontaneous evolution of the notion is the method of 
HegeL It will not, like the method of Fichte, merely 
subjectively propose a thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, 
but it will follow and watch the course of the thing itself. 



318 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

It will not produce being (existence), but what in itself 
already is, that it will reproduce for thought and con- 
sciousness. It will understand all in its own immanent 
connexion, which connexion is but a consequence of the 
inner necessity, by virtue of which there is manifested 
everywhere this production of difference from identity, 
and of identity from difference, this living pulse of the 
coming and the going of the antitheses. 

The clearest expression of his difference from Schelling 
is given by Hegel in his Phenomenology of the Mind 
(spirit), the first work in which he appeared (1807) as 
philosophizing on his own account, his place previously 
having been that of an adherent of Schelling. In sum he 
brings it together into the following three mots : In 
Schelling's philosophy the absolute appears as if it had 
been shot out of a pistol ; it is but the night in which all 
cows are black ; its expansion into a system again is no 
more than the proceeding of a painter who has on his 
palette two colours only, red and green, the one to be used 
on demand of historical pieces, the other on that of land- 
scapes. The first hit here refers to the manner in which 
the idea of the absolute is attained, instantaneously, that 
is, by means of intellectual perception, — a spring which 
in the phenomenology became under the hands of Hegel 
a graduated and methodic progress. The second hit con- 
cerns the mode of conceiving and expressing the absolute 
thus attained, wholly as absence of all finite differences, 
namely, but not at the same time as within itself the 
immanent production of a system of differences. Another 
expression of Hegel for this is, that all turns on thinking 
and enunciating the absolute (the true), not as substance 
(negation of all determinateness), but as subject (excita- 
tion and production of finite differences). The third hit 
is meant for the way in which Schelling carried out his 
principle in practical reference to the concrete matter of 
natural and spiritual fact, by applying to objects, namely, 
a ready-made schema (to wit, the antithesis real and 
ideal), instead of allowing the thing itself spontaneously 
to unfold and particularize itself. The school, particu- 
larly of Schelling, was conspicuous for its activity in this 
schematizing formalism, and to it specially applies what 
Hegel further remarks in the preface to the Phenomeno- 
logy : ' When this formalism intimates, let us say, that 
mind is electricity, or an animal azote, it is natural that 
the uninitiated should gape with wonder, and admire in 



TRANSITION TO HEGEL. 319 

the intimation the profundity of genius. But the trick 
of such sagacity is as soon learned, as it is easy to prac- 
tise ; and its repetition becomes as insupportable as the 
repetition of a detected juggling trick. This method of 
labelling everything in heaven and in earth, in nature 
and in man, with the couple of terms of the general 
schema, converts the universe into a huckster's shop, 
with its tiers and its rows of closed ticketed boxes.' 

The special object of the phenomenology was, by a 
development of consciousness in its essential principle, 
to establish what was to Hegel the absolute cognition, — 
to demonstrate this cognition, indeed, to be but the high- 
est step and stage of consciousness. Hegel gives in this 
work a history of consciousness as it appears in time 
(hence the title), an evolution of the epochs of the growth 
of consciousness on its way to philosophical knowledge. 
The inner development of consciousness is realized by the 
particular state, in which it may at any time exist, be- 
coming always objective (known) to it, and by this know- 
ledge of its own being raising it always into a higher and 
higher state. The phenomenology attempts to show how 
and by what necessity consciousness ascends from stage 
to stage, from in-itself to for-itself (from implicitness to 
explicitness), from being to knowing. The beginning is 
taken with the lowesjt stage, with immediate (intuitive, 
natural) consciousness. Hegel has entitled this chapter, 
1 Sensible certainty, or opinion and the this.'* On this 
stage, to the questions of What is the this or the here ? 
and, What is the now ? the answer of the ego is — Here is 
a tree ; now, it is night. Let us but turn round, how- 
ever, and the here is not a tree, but a house, while if we 
lay aside the second answer, in order to look at it later, 
the now is found to be no longer night, but noon. The 
this, then, becomes a not-this, that is, a universal, a 
general notion. And necessarily so, for when I say 
' this bit of paper,' I say something universal and not 
particular, as each and every bit of paper is a * this bit 
of paper.' In this inner dialectic lies the transition of 
direct sensible certainty into perception. And so each 
stage in the consciousness of the philosophizing subject 
involving itself in contradictions, and through this 
immanent dialectic rising ever into a higher one, the 
evolution continues, till, with the complete elimination 
of contradiction, all strangeness between subject and 
object disappears, and the soul comes to perfect self- 



320 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

cognition, and perfect self-certainty. Briefly to name 
the several stages, consciousness first appears as sen- 
suous certainty ; then as perception, the object of 
which is a thing with its qualities ; further, again, as 
understanding, apprehension of objects as principles 
reflected into themselves, or as discrimination between 
force and manifestation of force, noumenon and phe- 
nomenon, outer and inner. Next, consciousness, — 
which in the object and its qualities has now recog- 
nised its own self, its own pure essential nature, for 
which consequently the other as other is eliminated — 
becomes the self -identical ego, the truth and certainty of 
itself, self-consciousness. Self-consciousness then, as 
universal self-consciousness or reason describes another 
series of successive stages, until it appears as spirit, 
reason that, filled and identified with the rationality of 
existence and the outer world, dominates the natural 
and spiritual universe as its kingdom, in which it knows 
itself at home. Spirit rises through the stadia of 
instinctive observance, information and enlightenment, 
morality and general moral views, to religion ; and re- 
ligion itself, lastly, terminates, in its consummation as 
revealed religion, in the absolute cognition. On this last 
stage being and thinking are no longer apart, being is no 
longer the object of thinking, but the object of thinking 
is now thinking itself. Science is nothing but intelli- 
gence truly cognising its own self. In the closing words 
of the Phenomenology, Hegel thus glances back on the 
road that has been travelled : * The goal, absolute cogni- 
tion, or spirit (intelligence) that knows itself as spirit, 
has for its path the inward assimilation and conservation 
of spirits (the subordinate stages), as they are in them- 
selves, and achieve the organization of their empire. Their 
conservation, on the side of their free actual manifestation 
in the form of contingency, is history, while on the side 
of their logically understood organization, it is the science 
of cognition as it phenomenally presents itself in time. 
Both together, history logically understood, form the 
record and the Calvary of the absolute spirit, the reality, 
truth, and certainty of its throne, without which it were 
the sole and lifeless eremite ; only — 

" From the goblet of this spirit-empire, 
Foams for it its infinitude." • 

For the rest, the march of the Phenomenology is not 



HEGEL. 321 

yet a strictly scientific one ; it is the first genial applica- 
tion of the 'absolute method,* interesting and sugges- 
tive in its critique of the forms of 'phenomenal cognition/ 
but, in the disposal and arrangement of the opulent 
dialectical and historical material on which it operates, 
it is arbitrary. 

XLV.— Hegel 

GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL was born 
at Stuttgart on the 27th of August 1770. In his 
eighteenth year he entered the university of Tubingen, 
with a view ultimately to the study of theology. As 
student he attracted no particular attention : it was the 
youthful Schelling who here at that time outshone all 
his contemporaries. After having been a domestic tutor 
successively in Switzerland and at Frankfort-on -the -Maine, 
he qualified himself for the academical career at Jena in 
1801. He ranked at first as an adherent and supporter 
of the philosophy of Schelling. And in this sense we 
find written his tractate of the same year, on the ' Differ- 
ence between the Philosophical Systems of Fichte and 
Schelling. * Soon afterwards, indeed, he openly joined 
Schelling in the editing of the Critical Journal of Philo- 
sophy (1802-3) to which he contributed a variety of im- 
portant articles. He had but small success at first as an 
academic teacher, and though appointed to a professorship 
in 1805, the political catastrophe that presently burst 
over Germany soon deprived him of it again. On the day 
of the battle of Jena, amid the thunder of the artillery, he 
wrote the last words of the Phenomenology of the Spirit, 
his first great, original book, the crown of his Jena 
career. Some time afterwards he was wont to speak of 
this work (which appeared in 1807) as his voyage of 
discovery. From Jena, Hegel went to Bamberg ; and 
there — being in want of all other means of subsistence 
— he edited for two years the local political journal. In 
the autumn of 1808 he became rector of the academy 
at Nurnberg. It was in this capacity that — slowly 
maturing all his works, and only properly beginning his 
literary career when Schelling had already ended his — 
he composed (1812-16) his Logic. In the year last 
named, he received a call to a chair of philosophy at 
Heidelberg, where, in 1817, he published his Encydo- 
pcedia of the Philosophical Sciences, in which he expounded 
x 



322 HI ST OR Y OF PHIL OSOPH Y. 

for the first time the whole of his system. The fulness 
of his fame and activity, however, properly dates only from 
his call to Berlin in 1818. Here there rose up around him 
a numerous, widely-extended, and, in a scientific point of 
view, exceedingly active school ; here, too, he acquired, 
from his connexion with the Prussian bureaucracy, as well 
political influence for himself as the credit for his system 
of a state-philosophy : not always to the advantage of 
the inner freedom of his philosophy, or o£ its moral 
worth. Still, in his Moral and Political Philosophy, 
published in 1821, Hegel rejects not the fundamental 
priDcix>les of the modern political system ; he demands 
popular representation, liberty of the press, open law- 
courts, trial by jury, and administrative independency of 
corporations. In Berlin, Hegel prelected on almost all 
the branches of philosophy. His various courses of lec- 
tures were published after his death, by his friends and 
disciples. His delivery as a lecturer was hesitating, 
embarrassed, and without ornament, but not without a 
peculiar charm as the immediate expression of deep and 
labouring thought. The relaxation of social intercourse 
he sought rather among plain and unofficial people than 
in the company of the great ; he had no liking to shine 
in salons. In the year 1830, he was made rector of the 
university, and fulfilled the duties of the office in a more 
practical manner than previously Fichte. Hegel died of 
cholera on the 14th November 1831, the anniversary of 
the death of Leibnitz. He lies in the same graveyard as 
Solger and Fichte, close beside the latter, and not far 
from the former. The publication of his collected writ- 
ings and lectures was commenced in 1832 : — Vol. 1. The 
Smaller Treatises; 2. The Phenomenology; 3-5. Logic; 
6-7. The Encyclopaedia ; 8. The Moral and Political 
Philosophy; 9. The Philosophy of History; 10. The 
Lectures on Esthetics; 11-12. The Philosophy of 
Religion; 13-15. The History of Philosophy ; 16-18. The 
Miscellaneous Works. Rosenkranz has written his Life. 
The internal classification of the Hegelian system is, 
in consequence of the course taken by thought in it, a 
tripartite one: — (1.) The development of those pure 
universal notions, or thought-determinations which, as it 
were a timeless prius, underlie and form the foundation 
of all natural and spiritual life, the logical evolution of 
the absolute — the Science of Logic ; (2.) The development 
of the real world, nature, in its particularizedness and ex- 



HEGEL. 323 

ternalizedness — the Philosophy of Nature ; (3.) The de- 
velopment of the ideal world, or of the concrete spirit that 
is actualized in Rights, Morals, Politics, Art, Religion, 
Science — the Philosophy of the Spirit These three parts 
of the system represent at the same time the three 
moments of the absolute method, Position, Negation, and 
Unity of both. The Absolute is, firstly, pure immaterial 
thought ; secondly, it is heterization of pure thought, 
disruption of thought into the infinite atomism of time 
and space — nature ; thirdly, it returns out of this its 
self-externalization and self- alienation back into its own 
self, it resolves the heterization of nature, and only in 
this way becomes at last actual, self-cognisant thought, 
Spirit. 

I. The Science of Logic, 

The logic of Hegel is the scientific exposition and 
development of the pure notions of reason, — of those 
notions or categories which underlie all thought and all 
being, and which are as well the fundamental factors of 
subjective cognition, as the indwelling soul of objective 
reality, — of those ideas in which the spiritual and the 
natural have their point of coincidence. The realm of 
logic, says Hegel, is truth as it is in its own self, and 
without veil. It is, as he also figuratively says, the 
exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before 
the creation of the world or of a single finite being. It 
is thus, no doubt, a realm of shadows; but these 
shadows are — in freedom from all material crassitude — 
the simple ultimate principles, into the diamond net of 
which the entire universe is built. 

For a beginning of the collection and discussion of 
these pure notions, we have to thank several philoso- 
phers, as Aristotle in his Categories, Wolff in his Onto- 
logy, Kant in his Transcendental Analytic. But by 
these they were neither completely enumerated, nor 
critically tested, nor yet derived from a principle, but only 
empirically taken up and lexicologically treated. In con- 
trast to this procedure, Hegel sought (1.) completely to 
collect these notions ; (2.) critically to test them (that 
is, to exclude all but pure, unsensuous thought) ; and 
(3.) — what is the most characteristic peculiarity of the 
Hegelian logic — dialectically to deduce them the one from 
the other, and develop them into an internally articu- 
lated system of pure reason. Fichte, before Hegel, 



324 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

had accentuated the necessity of a deduction on the 
part of reason, — purely out of its own self, and perfectly 
free from any pre-supposition, — of the entire system of 
knowledge. This thought Hegel seizes, but in an ob- 
jective fashion. His beginning is not with certain 
highest axioms in which all further development is 
already implicitly contained, and serves consequently 
simply for their more particular characterization ; but, 
taking stand on what requires no further support of 
proof, on the simplest notion of reason, that of pure 
being, he deduces thence, in a progress from abstracter 
to concreter notions, the complete system of pure, rational 
knowledge. The spring of this evolution is the dialec- 
tical method that advances from notion to notion through 
negation. 

All position, says Hegel, is negation ; every notion 
has in it the opposite of itself, in which it passes forward 
to its own negation. But, again, all negation is position, 
affirmation. When a notion is negated, the result is not 
forthwith a mere nothing, a pure negative, but on the 
contrary a concrete positive ; there results, in fact, a 
new notion, and one, too, that is enriched by the negation 
of the preceding one. The negation of the unit, for ex- 
ample, is the notion of plurality. In this manner, nega- 
tion is made by Hegel the vehicle of the dialectic progress. 
Each notion is no sooner affirmed than it is again negated, 
and of this negation the product is a higher and a richer 
notion. This method, at once analytic and synthetic, 
Hegel uses throughout the entire system of knowledge. 

We proceed to a brief summary of the Hegelian logic. 
It separates into three parts, — the doctrine of Being, the 
doctrine of Essence (essential nature), and the doctrine of 
the Notion, 

1. The Doctrine of Being. 

(a.) Quality. — The beginning of scientific cognition is 
the direct, immediate, indeterminate notion of Being. In 
its entire want of logical comprehension, complete vacancy, 
it stands before thought with precisely the same mean- 
ing as simple negation, Nothing. These two notions, 
consequently, are not more absolutely opposed than 
absolutely identical ; each of them disappears immedi- 
ately into the other. This oscillation, or disappearance 
of the one into the other, is pure Becoming, which more 



HEGEL. 325 

specially is Origination, as transition from Nothing to 
Being, while, as transition from Being to Nothing, it is 
Decease. The precipitation of this process of coming to 
be and ceasing to be into a simple unity at rest, is recog- 
nisable State (Daseyn, Thereness, So-ness). State is Being, 
with an element of definiteness, or it is Quality, and 
more specially still Reality, Limited State. Limited State 
excludes other (or others) from itself. This reference to 
self which is conditioned by negative relation to other 
(or others), is named Being -for-self (independent, self- 
contained individuality). This Being-for-self, that refers 
itself only to its own self, and is repellent to aught else, 
is One (the unit). But through this repulsion, the One 
directly affirms (implies) Many ones. But the many 
ones are not different the one from the other. The one 
is what the other is. The Many are, therefore, One. 
But the One is equally the Many. For its exclusion is 
affirmation of its opposite, or it thereby virtually affirms 
itself as plurality. Quality, through this dialectic of 
Attraction and Repulsion, passes into Quantity; for in- 
difference to the qualitative speciality, indifference to 
difference, is Quantity. 

(b.) Quantity. — Quantity concerns magnitude, and as 
such is indifferent to Quality. So far as the Magnitude 
contains many distinguishable units in it, it is Discrete, 
or exhibits the moment of Discretion ; so far, again, 
as the many units are homogeneous, the Magnitude, as 
without distinction, is Continuous, or it exhibits the 
moment of Continuity. Each of these two characters is 
at the same time identical with the other ; discretion 
cannot be thought without continuity, continuity not 
without discretion. Actuality of quantity, or limited 
quantity, is the Quantum. In the quantum the moments 
of unity and plurality are also contained ; it is an 
amount of units, — that is, Number. Opposed to quan- 
tum or extensive magnitude stands intensive magnitude 
or Degree. In the notion of degree, which implies 
always a certain singleness of power, virtue, or deter- 
minateness, Quantity returns to Quality. The union of 
Quantity and Quality is Measure. 

(c.) Measure (proportion) is a qualitative quantum, a 
quantum on which the quality depends. An example of 
this quantitative force, on which the actual so-ness of 
the particular object wholly rests, is temperature, which, 
in relation to water, decides whether this latter shall 



326 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

remain water or become either ice or steam. Here the 
quantum of the heat actually constitutes the quality of 
the water. Quality and quantity, consequently, are per- 
petually interchanging characters, and in a being, a third 
something, which is itself different from its own directly- 
apparent what and how much. This negation of the 
directness and immediacy, this quality (or something) 
which is independent of the directly-present existential 
form, is Essence. Essence is Being-within-self, a being 
in internality to self, and so self-diremption of being, 
being that is reflected into itself. Hence the duplicity 
of all the distinctive characters of essence. 

2. The Doctrine of Essence. 

(a.) Essence as such. — Essence, as reflected being, is 
reference to self only in that it is reference to other. 
This being is called reflected in analogy with the reflexion 
of light, which impinging in its rectilinear course on the 
surface of a mirror, is thrown back from it. In the same 
way, then, as reflected light is something mediated or 
affirmed (posited) by its reference to other (that is, to 
something else), reflected being is such an entity as is 
shown to be mediated by, or founded on, another. 
When philosophy proposes for its problem, consequently, 
cognition of the essence of things, the immediate (directly 
presentant) being of these things is thereby assumed to 
be mere rind or veil behind which the essence is con- 
cealed. In the very speaking of the essence of an object, 
therefore, we necessarily reduce its immediate being 
(that is in contrast to the essence, but without which 
it were impossible to think the essence), to something 
merely negative, to appearance (Schein). Being shines, 
shows, or appears by (an) essence. Essence, conse- 
quently, is being (the outward being) shining, showing, 
or appearing away into its own self. Essence, as against 
the Appearance, yields the notion of the Essential ; what 
only shines or appears by (an) essence is the Inessential. 
But inasmuch as the Essential only is as in relation to 
the Inessential, the Inessential is itself Essential ; the 
Essential is quite as much in want of the Inessential, as 
the Inessential of the Essential The consequence is, 
then, that each appears by (an) the other; or there 
takes place between them that mutual relation which we 
name reflexion. In this whole sphere, then, we have to 



HEGEL. 327 

do with determinations of reflexion, with characters such 
that either indicates the other, and is incogitable with- 
out the other (for example, positive and negative, ante- 
cedent and consequent, thing and quality, matter and 
form, force and operation of force). We have thus 
again in the evolution of Essence the same characters 
as in the evolution of Being, but now they are in a 
reflected form, and no longer direct or immediate. For 
Being and Nothing, we have now Positive and Nega- 
tive, for State (Dasein) Existence (Existenz), etc. 

Essence is reflected Being, reference to self, which is 
through a medium of reference to other, auother which 
appears by (an) it. This reflected reference to self we 
term Identity (which, in the so-called first law of thought, 
the axiom of identity A = A, is only incompetently and 
abstractly expressed). As reference to self, which is 
equally distinction of it from itself, Identity essentially 
contains and implies the character of Difference. Direct, 
external difference is Diversity. Difference as such, the 
essential difference, is Contrariety (Positive and Negative). 
The self- contrariety of essence is Contradiction. The 
contrariety of identity and difference is reconciled in the 
notion of Ground. In distinguishing itself from itself, 
namely, essence is firstly the essence that is identical 
with itself, Ground, and, secondly, the essence that is 
distinguished or ejected from itself, the Consequent. In 
the category of ground and consequent, then, the same 
thing, the essence, is twice put : the ground and what it 
grounds are the same matter, and so it is a hard pro- 
blem to define the ground otherwise than by the conse- 
quent, and conversely. Their separation, then, is merely 
an arbitrary abstraction, but just for this reason also 
(the identity of both), any application of this category is 
properly a formalism. A reflection that demands grounds, 
would simply see the same thing twice, now in its im- 
mediate, direct appearance, and again in its posititious- 
ness, afnrmedness, through the ground. 

(b.) Essence and Manifestation. — The Manifestation is 
no longer essence-less appearance, but appearance that is 
filled-up, full-filled, implemented by essence. There is no 
appearance without an essence, and no essence that 
passes not into manifestation. It is one and the same 
matter that is taken now as essence and now as mani- 
festation. In reference to essence in manifestation, the 
positive moment that was previously termed ground is 



323 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

now called Matter, the negative one Form. Every 
essence is unity of matter and form, that is, it exists. 
Existence, namely, in contradistinction to immediate 
(unreflected) Being, is the term which we give to that 
being which is produced by the ground, — that is, to 
grounded, or founded, being (being that is reflected to 
an antecedent source). Essence as existent is called 
Thing. In the relation of the Thing to its Properties, 
the relation of form and matter is repeated. The Pro- 
perties exhibit the thing on its formal side : in matter it 
is Thing. The relation between the Thing and its Pro- 
perties is usually designated by the verb Have (the thing 
has properties), in contradistinction to immediate one- 
ness of being. Essence as negative reference to itself 
and repelling itself from itself into Reflexion-into-other 
is Force and Exertion (its operation). This category has 
it in common with the other categories of essence, that 
in it one and the same matter is twice put. The Force 
can be explained only by the Exertion, the exertion only 
by the force, and hence any explanation that resorts to 
this category is but a movement in tautologies. To con- 
sider force as incognisable is but a self-deception of the 
understanding in regard to its own act. The category of 
force and exertion finds higher expression in the category 
of Inner and Outer. The latter stands higher, for Force 
to exert itself requires a solicitation, whereas the Inner 
is Essence of itself (spontaneously) manifesting itself. 
These two co-efficients, Inner and Outer, are also iden- 
tical ; neither is without the other. What a man, for 
example, is inwardly in his character, that is he also 
outwardly in his action. The truth of this relation, 
consequently, is rather the identity of Inner and Outer, 
of Essence and Manifestation, that is : 

(c.) Actuality. — Besides (unreflected) Being and Exist- 
ence we have Actuality, then, as a third stage of being. 
In Actuality, the Manifestation of Essence is adequate 
and complete. Veritable Actuality, therefore (as distin- 
guished from Possibility and Contingency), is necessary 
being, rational Necessity. The notorious propos of Hegel, 
— All that is actual is rational, and all that is rational is 
actual, — is seen, with such a meaning as is given here to 
' Actuality, ' to be simple tautology. What is necessary, 
regarded as its own ground (a ground or origin, then, 
that is identical with itself), is Substance. The side of 
manifestation, what is inessential in the case of Substance, 



HEGEL. 329 

contingent in the case of the Necessary, is constituted by 
the Accidents. The Accidents are no longer to Substance, 
as Manifestation to Essence or Outer to Inner, an adequate 
representation ; they are only transitory affections of 
Substance, contingent and mutable phenomenal forms, 
like waves of the sea in relation to the water of the sea. 
They are not produced by substance, but rather disap- 
pear in it as their ground. The relation of Substantiality 
passes into the relation of Causality. In this relation 
one and the same matter is twice put, once as Cause 
and again as Effect. The cause of heat is heat, and its 
effect is again heat. Effect is a higher notion than the 
accident of substantiality, for it is actually contraposed 
to the cause, and the cause itself, passes over into the 
effect. So far, however, as in the relation of causality, 
either side presupposes the other, the truth is rather a 
relation such that in it either side is cause and effect at 
once — Reciprocity. Eeciprocity is a higher relation than 
causality, inasmuch as there is no such thing as a true 
causality : there is no effect without counter-effect, no 
action without counter-action (reaction). 

With the category of Eeciprocity we quit the sphere 
of Essence. All the categories of essence have displayed 
a duplicity ; but in reciprocity the duplicity of cause 
and effect has collapsed to unity. Now, then, instead of 
duplicity we have again unity, identity with self. Or 
we have again a Being (or a sort of being) that exhibits 
diremption into several self-subsistent factors, which 
factors, however, are immediately identical with the 
being itself. This Unity of the Immediacy (the self- 
subsistency) of Being with the self- diremption of Essence 
is the Notion. 

3. The Doctrine of the Notion. 

Notion is that in the other that is identical with itself ; 
it is substantial totality, the moments of which (Singular, 
Particular), are themselves the whole (the Universal), — a 
totality which no less gives free scope to the difference than 
it resumes it again into unity within itself. The Notion 
is (a.) Subjective notion, the unity of the many in its own 
self, expressed as in the moment of Form, and in abs- 
traction from the Matter. It is (b.) Objectivity, notion 
in the shape of Immediacy, as external unity of self-de- 
pendent existences. It is (c.) Idea, the notion that is no 



330 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

less objective itself than it reduces the objectivity of 
sense into unity with itself, — that is no less immanent in 
the object, than independently existent as punctual unity 
of all reality. 

(a.) The subjective notion contains the moments of 
Universality (identity with itself in the difference), Parti- 
cularity (the differencedness that remains in identity with 
the universal) and Singularity (the independent indi- 
viduality that unites within itself the universal and the 
particular, the genus and the species). The universal 
independently expressed is the notion as such. This 
one-sidedness is remedied by statement of the universal 
as inherent in a singular, or as predicate of a subject ; 
that is, by the Judgment The judgment enunciates the 
identity of the singular with the universal, and by con- 
sequence, the sundering of the universal into independent 
individuals that are identical with it, — the self-diremp- 
tion of the notion. In the judgment the notion expresses 
itself in that aspect of itself, by virtue of which it is not 
something abstract (like substance, cause, force), but 
concrete and definite, immanent in individual existences, 
and continuing itself far and wide into a world of such. 
The one-sidedness of the judgment — the expression of 
the singular as immediately identical with the universal, 
and the consequent veritable sundering of both (the 
universal has more extension than the singular, the 
singular is concreter than the universal) — is relieved in 
the Syllogism (the close, or taking-together). In it 
universal and singular become commediated (united) by 
the particular, which steps between both as mediate 
notion. The syllogism, consequently, exhibits the uni- 
versal as, through its particularization, it realizes itself 
in the singular ; or otherwise expressed, it exhibits the 
singular as, through mediation of the particular, it is in 
the universal. In short, the syllogism first perfectly 
demonstrates the nature of the notion to be distinction 
of itself in itself into a maniness of being, within which 
the singular is through virtue of its particularity, as well 
self-substantially opposed to the universal, as closed 
together into identity with it. From what precedes, then, 
the notion is not something merely subjective, but some- 
thing that, in the totality of being comprehended under 
it, is possessed of reality : so considered the notion is the 
objective notion. 

(h.) Objectivity is not outward being as such, but an 



HEGEL, 331 

outward being complete within itself, and intelligibly 
conditioned. Its first form is Mechanism, the co-exist- 
ence of independent individuals which, mutually indiffer- 
ent, are kept together in the unity of a whole (aggregate) 
only by a common bond. This indifference eliminates 
itself in Chemism, the mutual attraction, interpenetra- 
tion, and neutralization of independent individuals which 
unite to a whole. But the unity here is only the nega- 
tive one of the resolution of units into a whole ; the 
third form of objectivity is, therefore, Teleology, the 
End (correspondent to the syllogism viewed as close), 
the notion that realizes itself, that subordinates being 
into means for itself, and that preserves and fulfils itself 
in this process of the sublation of the independency of 
things. The defect in the notion of End is, that it has 
objectivity still opposed to it as something alien ; but this 
defect corrected, we have the notion of End as immanent 
in objectivity, — the notion that pervades objectivity, 
that fulfils and realizes itself in it, — in a word, the Idea. 

(c.) The Idea is the highest logical definition of the 
absolute. It is neither the merely subjective, nor the 
merely objective notion, but the notion that, immanent 
in the object, releases it into its complete independency, 
but equally retains it in unity with itself. Its immediate 
form is Life, organism, the immediate unity of the object 
with the notion, which latter pervades the former as 
its soul, as principle of vitality. But the notion is at the 
same time not expressed in its own form here. The 
idea as such, then, opposing itself to the object, is 
Cognition, the finding of itself again on the part of the 
notion in objectivity (Idea of the True), the realiz- 
ing of itself into objectivity, in order to resolve the 
independency of the object, and raise reality into in- 
telligibility (Idea of the Good). This over-against each 
other of the Idea and the Object is, however, one-sided ; 
cognition and action necessarily presuppose the identity 
of subjective and objective being. The highest notion, 
consequently, is the Absolute Idea, the unity of Life and 
Cognition, the universal that thinks itself, and thinkingly 
realizes itself in an infinite actuality, from which, as its 
immediacy, it no less distinguishes itself again. 

The Idea, releasing itself accordingly into this immedi- 
ate actuality, is Nature, from which returning into itself, 
and consciously closing itself together with itself, it is 
Spirit. 



332 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



II. — The Philosophy of Nature. 

Nature is the idea in the form of hetereity (otherwise- 
ness) — the notion that has issued from its logical abstrac- 
tion into real particularization, and that so, consequently, 
has become external to its own self. The unity of the 
notion, then, has become concealed in nature ; and, in 
assuming for problem the following up of intelligence 
as concealed in nature, or the self-development of 
nature into spirit, philosophy must not forget that self- 
externalization, sunderedness, out-of -itself -ness, consti- 
tutes the character of nature as such ; that the products 
of nature possess not yet any reference to themselves, or 
are not yet correspondent to the notion, but riot in 
unrestricted and unbridled contingency. Nature is a 
Bacchantic God, uncontrolled by, and unconscious of, 
himself. It offers, then, no example of an intelligibly 
articulated, continuously ascendant gradation. On the 
contrary, it everywhere mingles and confounds the 
essential limits by intermediate and spurious products 
which perpetually furnish instances in contradiction of 
every fixed classification. In consequence of this im- 
potence on the part of nature to hold fast the moments 
of the notion, the philosophy of nature is constantly 
compelled, as it were, to capitulate between the world of 
the concrete individual products and the regulative of 
the speculative idea. 

Its beginning, middle, and end are prescribed for the 
philosophy of nature. Its beginning is the first or im- 
mediate characteristic of nature, the abstract universality 
of its self- externality, — Space and Matter. Its end is the 
disimprisonment of spirit from nature, in the form of 
rational, conscious individuality, — Man. To demonstrate 
the connecting middle-terms between the two, to follow 
up step by step the ever more and more successful 
attempts of nature to rise in humanity to self-conscious- 
ness — this is the problem which the philosophy of nature 
has to resolve. In this process nature describes three 
stadia. It (nature) is : — 

(1.) Matter and the ideal system of matter : Mechanics. 
Matter is nature's self-externality in its most universal 
form. In ib,v nevertheless, we have already manifested 
that tendency to individuality which constitutes the red 
strand in the philosophy of nature, — the nisus of gravita- 



HEGEL. 333 

tion. Gravity is the self-internality (the being within 
self ) of matter, its longing to come to itself, the first trace 
of subjectivity. The centre of gravity of a body is the 
oneness which it seeks. The same tendency towards 
reduction of multiplicity into individuality is the funda- 
mental principle of universal gravitation, of the whole 
solar system. Centrality, the constituent notion of 
gravity, is here a system, and that, too, — so far as the 
form of the orbits, the velocity of the movements, or the 
revolutionary periods are reducible to mathematical laws, 
— a system of real rationality. 

(2.) Matter, however, is not yet possessed of indivi- 
duality. Even in astronomy, it is not the bodies as such 
that interest us, but their geometrical relations. Every- 
where here it is quantitative, not qualitative conditions 
that are considered. Matter, nevertheless, has in the 
solar system, found its centre, its self. Its abstract, dead, 
dull self -includedness has resolved itself to form. Matter, 
as qualified matter, then, is the object of Physics. In 
physics we have to do with matter which has particu- 
larized itself into a body, into individuality. Under this 
head we consider inorganic nature, its forms and their 
reciprocal relations. 

(3.) Or ganics. — Inorganic nature, the subject of phy- 
sics, destroys itself in the chemical process. In this pro- 
cess, namely, losing all its properties (cohesion, colour, 
lustre, resonance, transparency, etc.), the inorganic body 
demonstrates the fleetingness of its existence and this 
relativity constitutes its being. The sublation of the 
chemical process is organism and life. The animate body 
is always in act, indeed, to relapse into the chemical pro- 
cess. Oxygen, hydrogen, salts, tend ever to appear, but 
are always again eliminated. The animate body resists 
the chemical process till it dies : life is self-preservation, 
self -end (its own object). Nature, then, attaining to in- 
dividuality in physics, advances to subjectivity in 
organics. As life the idea describes three stages : — 

(a.) The first, as geological organism, or as mineral 
kingdom, is the universal effigies of life. Still the mineral 
kingdom is rather the result and residuum of a past life 
and process of formation. The primitive mountain is the 
arrested crystal of life ; the earth of geology is a gigan- 
tic corpse. The life of the present, the life that re- 
creates itself eternally afresh, the first stir of subjectivity 
breaks forth only 



334 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

(b.) in the vegetable organism, the world of plants. 
The plant has attained to the processes of growth, assimi- 
lation, and generation. But it is not yet a totality co- 
articulated into its own self. Every part of the plant is 
the entire individual, every branch the whole tree. The 
parts are indifferent in regard to each other : the corolla 
may be the radix, the radix corolla. In the case of the 
plant, then, the true self -in volution of individuality is not 
yet attained to : to that there is necessary the absolute 
unity of an individuum. This unity, — singular, or indi- 
vidual, concrete subjectivity, — we have first of all only 

(c.) in the animal organism, the animal kingdom. The 
animal organism alone possesses uninterrupted intussus- 
ception, spontaneous movement, sensation, and, in its 
higher types, voice and internal warmth. In its highest 
type, lastly, in man, nature, or rather the spirit that 
works in nature, has taken itself together into conscious 
unity in an ego. And so spirit now, become a free 
rational self, completes its deliverance from Nature. 

III. — The Philosophy of Spirit (Mind). 

1. The Subjective Spirit 

Spirit is the truth of nature, the resolution of its alien- 
ated outwardness, the attainment to identity with self. 
Its nature, then, is : formally, freedom, or the capability 
of abstracting from everything ; materially, the power to 
reveal itself as spirit, as conscious reason, to erect a 
structure of objective rationality, to assume for its domain 
the universe of mind. But, in order to know itself as 
reason and all reason, in order to render nature more 
and more negative, spirit has at the same time, in a 
similar way to nature, a series of grades to describe, 
a series of liberating acts to perform. Proceeding 
from nature, from the externality of which it wrests 
itself into independency, it is in the first instance 
Soul, or natural spirit, and, as such, the object of 
Anthropology in the narrower sense. As this natural 
spirit it lives the universal planetary life that is the 
common condition ; and is in subjection, consequently, 
to the difference of climates, to the vicissitudes of 
the seasons, and the changes of the day. It is sub- 
mitted also to the influence of geographical position, and 
must accept the peculiarities of race. Again, it under- 
goes the modification of national type, and is affected by 



HEGEL, 335 

the way of living and the bodily form. These natural 
conditions, moreover, exercise a control also over the in- 
tellectual and moral character. Lastly, there must be 
considered here the natural peculiarity of the individual 
subject, in disposition, temperament, character, family 
idiosyncrasy, etc. To these we must add, too, the 
natural variations of age, sex, sleep, etc. Spirit every- 
where here is still absorbed in nature, and this inter- 
mediate condition between sleep in nature and individu- 
ality is Sensation, the blind groping of the spirit in its 
unconscious and unintelligent individuality. A higher 
stage of sensation is Feeling, sensibility, as it were sensa- 
tion into self, in which the individuality of self appears. 
Feeling, in its perfected form, is the feeling of self (self- 
possession). The feeling of self, inasmuch as the sub- 
ject of it is at once absorbed into the speciality of his 
own sensations, and collected within himself as subjec- 
tive unit, constitutes the first step to Consciousness. 
The ego appears now as the pit in which the various 
sensations, perception*, conceptions, ideas, are put 
away — the ego that is present with them all, that is the 
centre in which they all concur. Spirit, as conscious, 
as conscious individuality, as ego, is the object of the 
Phenomenology of consciousness (which, in smaller com- 
pass, reappears here as intermediate between anthropo- 
logy and psychology). 

Spirit was an individuum so long as it was inter- 
woven with nature ; when it has stripped off nature it is 
consciousness, or an ego. Distinguishing itself from 
nature, it has retired consequently into its own self ; 
and that with which it was previously identified, what 
was its own (telluric, national, etc.) speciality, confronts 
it now as its external world (earth, nation, etc.) The 
awakening of the ego, therefore, is the creative act of 
objectivity as such ; and, conversely, only by reference 
to objectivity, and as opposed to objectivity, is it that 
the ego, in conscious subjectivity, does awake. The 
ego, thus in front of objectivity, is consciousness in the 
narrower sense of the word. Consciousness becomes 
Self-consciousness by rising through the successive steps 
of immediate sensuous Opinion, Perception (WaJirnehm- 
ung), and Understanding, to the pure thought of per- 
sonality, to knowledge of itself as the free ego. Self- 
consciousness, again, becomes the Universal or Rational 
Self-consciousness in this way, that in consequence of its 



336 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

endeavours to appropriate objectivity and obtain recog- 
nition as a free subject, it falls into conflict with other 
self -consciousnesses, enters thus into a war of extermina- 
tion with them, but, out of this helium omnium contra 
omnes (the violent beginning of the State), emerges in the 
end as a common consciousness that has found the due 
mean between despotism and servitude, that is to say, 
as the veritably universal, rational self-consciousness. 
Rational self-consciousness, no longer negatively selfish 
towards its neighbour, but acknowledging the identity 
of this neighbour with itself, is actually free; it has 
itself in its neighbour present to itself, and has burst 
asunder the limitation to its own natural egoism. Now 
that it has subdued the nature and subjectivity in its 
ownself, we have spirit as spirit ; and as such it is the 
object of Psychology. 

Spirit here is first of all Theoretical spirit or Intelli* 
gence, and then Practical spirit or Will. It is theoretical, 
as relating itself to the rational object as something given, 
and as exhibiting it as its ; practical, as freeing from 
the one-sided form of subjectivity, and converting into 
objectivity, the subjectivized theoretical matter (truth), 
which it now holds and directly wills as its own. The 
practical, so far, is the truth of the theoretical spirit. 
The theoretical on its way to the practical spirit describes 
the stages of Perception (Anschauung), Conception, and 
Thought. Will, for its part, again, through Appetite, 
Desire, and Passion, reaches Free-will. The existence of 
free-will is Objective Spirit, — civil and political institutes, 
the State. In rights, morals, politics, freedom is realized 
— the rational will brought into external objectivity, into 
existence in real universal forms of life (institutions), — 
reason or the idea of the Good made actual. All the in- 
stincts and motives of nature return now moralized and 
established as ethical institutes, as Rights and Duties (the 
sexual instinct as Marriage and Family, the instinct of 
revenge as legal Penalty, etc.). 

2. The Objective Spirit. 

(a.) The immediate existence of free-will, free-will as 
actual and as actually and universally (legally) recog- 
nised in its freedom, is Legal Bight. The individual, 
bo far as he is capable of rights, so far as he possesses 
and exercises rights, is a Person. The rule of right, 



HEGEL. 337 

then, is, Be a person and respect others as persons. 
As a person man gives himself an external sphere of 
freedom, a substrate in regard to which he may realize 
his will : Property, Possession. As a person I have the 
right of property, the absolute right of appropriation, 
the right to set my will on everything, which thereby 
becomes mine. But I have equally the right to dis- 
possess myself of my property in favour of another 
person. This is effected in the sphere of right by Con- 
tract, and in it is freedom, liberty of disposal in regard 
to property, first perfectly realized. The relation of 
contract is the first step to the State, only the first step, 
however ; for to define the State as a contract of all with 
all is to degrade it into the category of private right and 
private property. It depends not on the will of the indi- 
vidual whether he shall live in the State or not. The 
relation of contract concerns private property. In con- 
tract as voluntary agreement there lies the possibility of 
the subjective will individualizing itself against right in 
itself or the universal will, the division, of the two wills 
is Wrong (civil wrong — delinquency, fraud, crime). This 
division demands a reconciliation, a restoration of right 
or of the universal will as against its temporary sublation 
or negation occasioned by the particular will. The right 
that thus restores itself as against the particular will, 
the negation of wrong, is penalty (punishment). Theories 
that found the right of penalty on purposes to prevent, 
deter, intimidate, or correct, mistake the nature of penalty. 
Prevention, intimidation, etc., are finite ends, i.e., mere 
means, and these, too, uncertain means. But an act of 
justice cannot be degraded into any mere means : justice 
is not exercised, in order that anything but itself be at- 
tained and realized. The fulfilment and self -manifesta- 
tion of justice is an absolute end, an end unto its own self. 
The special considerations which have been mentioned can 
come to be discussed only in reference to the modality of 
the penalty. The penalty which is realized in the person 
of a criminal is his right, his reason, his law, under which, 
then, he is justly subsumed. His act falls on his own 
head. Hegel defends even capital punishments, then, the 
repeal of which appears to him untimely sentimentality. 
(b.) The antithesis of the universal and the particular 
will transferred within the subject, constitutes Morality. 
In morality the freedom of the will develops itself into 
the spontaneity of the subject ; it is the negation of the 

Y 



338 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

externality of the legal element; it is will gone into its own 
self, and determining its own acts by reference to specific 
purposes, and its own conviction in regard to right and 
duty. The position of morality is the right of subjective 
will, of free ethical decision, the position of conscience. In 
right proper the consideration was not of my principle or 
design, but now there occurs question of the motive of will, 
of the intention. Hegel calls this position of moral reflec- 
tion, of action conditioned by a reference to motives and 
duty, — Morality ,in contradistinction to Sittlicltkeit, or sub- 
stantial observance. This position has three moments : 
(1.) The moment of the Purpose, so far as only the 
internal state of knowledge and will on the part of the 
agent comes into consideration, — so far as I accept the 
responsibility of an act only to the extent that the result 
is chargeable to my knowledge and will (imputation) ; 
(2.) The moment of Motive and the gratification of one's 
own subjective sense of the right, so far as I recognise 
as mine not only the purpose but the motive of the pur- 
pose, and so far as I possess the right to realize my con- 
victions, and to insist on consideration for my own well- 
being (this last is not simply to be sacrificed to abstract 
justice) ; (3.) The moment of the Good, so far as it is to 
be expected that the subjective will (for the very reason 
that, reflected into itself, it is the deciding will) shall 
maintain its subjective ends in unity with the universal 
will. The Good is the union of the particular subjective 
will with the universal objective will, or with the notion 
of will ; it is willed reason. Opposed to it is the Bad, 
the resistance of the subjective will to the universal, 
the attempt to make absolute its own individual self 
and self-will ; it is willed unreason. 

(c.) In the sphere of morality, will and the good are 
still only abstractly related ; the will as free is still pos- 
sibility of the bad ; the good, therefore, is as yet only a 
something that is or ought to be, it is not yet actual. 
Morality consequently is but a one-sided position. A 
higher position is that of established observance (Sittlieh- 
Jceit), which is the concrete identity of will and the good. 
In it the good becomes a something actual : it obtains 
the form of ethical institutions within which the will 
dwells : in this manner the good becomes to conscious- 
ness a second nature, and morality is converted into 
character, into living principle, into the ethical spirit. 



HEGEL. 339 

The ethical spirit is first immediate or existent in 
natural form, as Marriage and the Family. Three mo- 
ments enter into marriage, which ought not to be sepa- 
rated, but which, nevertheless, are very often erroneously 
isolated. Marriage is : (1.) A relation of sex, and rests 
on the difference of the sexes ; the societary or institu- 
tional element in it is, that the subject, instead of being 
isolated, has his being in his natural universality, in his 
relation to the genus. (2.) It is a relation of Right, 
particularly in the community of property. (3.) It is 
a spiritual communion of love and confidence. Hegel, 
however, lays no great weight on this subjective moment 
of sentiment in the concluding of a marriage : in the life 
of matrimony mutual inclination will soon grow. It is 
more ethical that the intention to marry should consti- 
tute the beginning, and that the personal inclination 
should be allowed to follow. For marriage is proxi- 
mately a duty. Hegel, therefore, would have divorce 
made as difficult as possible. For the rest Hegel develops 
and describes the being of the family with deep ethical 
feeling. 

The family in enlarging into a plurality of families 
grows into civil society, the members of which, although 
independent and individual, are associated into unity by 
their wants, by the external ordinances of police, and by 
the establishment of law and authority generally for the 
protection of person and property. Hegel distinguishes 
civil society from the State in disagreement with the 
majority of Publicists, who, in regarding the security of 
property and personal freedom as the principal purpose 
of the State, reduce the latter to a mere municipality. 
But from the principle of municipal association (civil 
society), union from mutual necessities, and for the pre- 
servation of natural rights, war is not intelligible. On 
the platform of municipal (civil) society, each is for him- 
self, independent, an end unto himself. All else is for 
him means only. The State, on the contrary, knows not 
independent individuals, each of whom contemplates and 
pursues only his own advantage : in the State the whole 
is tbe end, and the individual the means. For the ad- 
ministration of justice, Hegel, in contrast to those who 
refuse to our days the function of legislation, demands 
written, intelligible, and universally accessible laws ; and, 
in addition, as regards the exercise of judicial authority, 
open courts and trial by jury. As concerns the organi- 



340 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

zation of civil society, Hegel manifests a decided prefer- 
ence for corporate life. Marriage-sanctity, and honour 
in the corporations — these, he says, are the two moments, 
with which the disorganization of society connects itself. 

The interests of the individual sublating themselves 
into the idea of an ethical whole, the muncipality passes 
into the State. The State is the actuality of the Ethical 
Idea, the Ethical Spirit as it controls the action and 
knowledge of the individuals that are contained in it. 
The various States themselves finally, entering as indi- 
viduals into a mutual relation of attraction or repulsion, 
display in their destiny, in their rise and in their fall, 
the process of Universal History. 

In his conception of the State, Hegel has a decided 
leaning to the ancient political idea which completely 
subordinates the individual, the right of subjectivity, to 
the will of the State. The omnipotence of the State in 
its antique sense — this, before all, is held fast by Hegel. 
Hence his aversion to modern liberalism, to the claims, 
criticisms, and pretensions to know better on the part of 
individuals. The State to him is the rational ethical 
substance, within which the life of the individual must 
find itself, — it is existent reason to which the subject 
must with free vision adapt himself. The best constitu- 
tional form Hegel holds to be a limited monarchy, as ex- 
emplified in the English constitution ; to which Hegel 
especially leant, and which he doubtless had in view in 
his famous phrase The king is the dot on the i. An in- 
dividual is required, thought Hegel, who shall say yes, 
who shall prefix an ' I will ' to the decrees of the State, 
who shall be, as it were, the point of formal decision. 
'The personality of the State,' he says, 'is only actual 
as a person, a monarch. ' Hegel advocated, therefore, 
the hereditary monarchy. But he places at its side, as 
mediating element between the people and the prince, 
the various orders of the privileged classes, — not indeed 
for the control or restriction of the government, not for 
the preservation of the rights of the people, but only in 
order that the people may understand that the govern- 
ment is being well carried on, that the consciousness of 
the people may participate in it, that the State may enter 
into the subjective consciousness of the people. 

The various states and the individual national spirits 
lapse into the flood of Universal History. The conflict, 
the triumph and defeat of the various national spirits, 



HEGEL. 341 

the transition of the universal spirit from one people to 
another — this is the thesis of Universal History. The evo- 
lution of universal history is usually connected with a 
dominant people, in whom dwells the universal spirit, 
correspondently developed, and as against which the 
spirits of the other peoples are without right. Thus the 
spirits of the peoples encompass the throne of the abso- 
lute Spirit as witnesses and ornaments of the glory, and 
as co-operating to the realization, of the latter. 

3. The Absolute Spirit. 

Spirit is absolute, so far as it has returned from the 
sphere of objectivity into itself, into the ideality of cog- 
nition, into the perception of the absolute idea as the 
truth of all being. The subjugation of natural subjec- 
tivity by means of ethical and political observance is the 
path by which spirit ascends to this pure freedom, to the 
knowledge of its ideal substance as the Absolute. The 
first stage of the absolute spirit is Art, the immediate 
view of the idea in objective actuality; the second, 
Religion, the certainty of the idea as what is above all 
immediate reality, as the absolute power of being, pre- 
dominant over all that is individual and finite ; the third, 
Philosophy, the unity of the two first, the knowing of 
the idea as the absolute that is no less pure thought than 
immediately ail-existent reality. 

(a.) Art. — The absolute is immediately present to sens- 
uous perception in the beautiful or in art. The beauti- 
ful is the shining of the idea through a sensuous medium 
(stone, colour, sound, verse), the realization of the idea 
in the form of a finite manifestation. To the beautiful 
(and its sub-species the beautiful as such, the sublime, 
and the ludicrous) there always belong two factors, the 
thought and the material ; but both are inseparably 
together ; the material expresses nothing but the thought 
that animates and illuminates it, and of this thought it is 
only the external manifestation. The various forms of 
art depend on the various combinations that take place 
between the matter and the form. In the symbolical 
form of art, matter predominates ; the thought struggles 
through it only with pain and difficulty in order to bring 
the ideal into manifestation. In the classical form of 
art, the ideal has conquered its adequate existence in the 
material : form and matter are mutually absolutely com- 



342 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 

mensurate. Where finally spirit predominates, and the 
matter is reduced to a mere sign and show, through and 
beyond which the spirit ever breaks and struggles further 
— here we have the romantic form of art. The system 
of the individual arts coheres also with these varieties of 
form in art generally, but difference in the former is 
proximately conditioned by difference in the material. 
(1.) The beginning of art is Architecture, It belongs essen- 
tially to the symbolical form, the sensuous material being 
greatly in excess in its case, and the true adequacy of 
form and matter being still to seek. Its material is stone 
arranged in obedience to the laws of gravitation. Hence 
the character that belongs to it of mass and massiveness, 
of silent gravity, of oriental sublimity. After Architec- 
ture comes (2.) Sculpture, still in subjection, indeed, to a 
stiff and unyielding material, but an advance, nevertheless, 
from the inorganic to the organic. Forming it into body, 
it converts the matter into a mere vehicle simply ancillary. 
In representing body, this building of the soul, in its 
beauty and purity, the material completely disappears 
into the ideal ; not a remnant of the crasser element is 
left that is not in service to the idea. Nevertheless the 
life of the soul, feeling, mood, glance — these are beyond 
sculpture. The romantic art, /car' efox^j (3.) Painting 
is alone equal to them. Its medium is no longer a coarse 
material substrate but the coloured plane, the spiritual 
play of light ; it produces only the show of solid dimen- 
sion. Hence it is capable of expressing the whole scala 
of feelings, moods, and actions — actions full of dramati- 
cal movement. The perfect sublation of space, however, 
is (4.) Music. Its material is tone, the inner trembling 
of a sonorous body. Music quits consequently the world 
of sensuous perceptions and acts exclusively on inner 
emotion. Its seat is the womb and the well of the emo- 
tional soul whose movement is within itself. Music is 
the most subjective of arts. But the tongue of art is 
loosened at last only in (5.) Poetry or the literary art ; 
poetry has the privilege of universal expression. Its 
material is no longer sound simply, but sound as speech, 
sound as the word, the sign of an idea, the expression of 
reason. Poetry shapes not this material, however, in com- 
plete freedom, but in obedience to certain rhythmico-musi- 
cal laws of verse. All the other arts return in poetry : 
the plastic arts in the epos which is the large complacent 
narrative of picturesque national events; music in the 



HEGEL, 343 

ode which is the lyrical expression of the inmost soul ; the 
unity of both in the drama, which exhibits the conflict 
of individuals, absorbed in the interests of opposing sides. 

{b. ) Religion. — Poetry forms the transition of art into 
religion. In art the idea was present for perception, in 
religion it is present for conception. The burthen of all 
religion is the inward exaltation of the soul to the Abso- 
lute as the all-comprehending, all-reconciling substance 
of existence, the knowing of himself on the part of the 
subject as in unity with God. All religions seek unity 
of the divine and human. The rudest attempts in this 
direction occur (1.) in the natural religions of the East. 
God in them is still natural power, natural substance, 
before which the finite, the individual, disappears as a 
nullity. A loftier idea of God we find (2.) in the reli- 
gions of spiritual individuality, in which the divine is 
regarded as subject, — as sublime subjectivity full of 
wisdom and might in Judaism, the religion of sublim- 
ity ; as galaxy of plastic divine forms in the Greek 
religion, the religion of beauty ; as absolute political 
purpose in the Roman religion, the religion of the under- 
standing or of expediency (means to an end). Positive 
reconciliation of God and the world is only attained at 
last, however, (3.) in the Revealed or Christian religion, 
which, in the person of Christ, contemplates the God- 
Man, the realized unity of the Divine and the human, 
and apprehends God as the self -externalizing (self-incar- 
nating) idea that from this externalization eternally 
returns into itself, — that is to say, as the Tri-une God. 
The spiritual import, therefore, of the Revealed or 
Christian Religion is the same as that of the Speculative 
Philosophy, only that it is expressed there in the mode 
of conception, in the form of a history, here in the mode 
of the notion. But with abstraction from the form of 
religious conception, we have the position of the 

(c.) Absolute Philosophy y of thought that knows itself 
as all truth, that reproduces from itself the entire 
natural and spiritual universe, — that thought the evolu- 
tion of which is precisely the system of Philosophy — a 
sphere of spheres self-closed. 

With Schelling and Hegel the history of philosophy 
ends. The succeeding efforts, partly to advance the 
previous idealism, partly to find new principles, belong 
to the present, and not yet to history. 



ANNOTATIONS. 



The general purpose of these notes in the first instance 
was to complete the information of the student. J To 
that end they were to have been guided by considera- 
tions : 1. Explanatory ; 2. Critical ; and 3. Supplemen- 
tary. The first consideration, naturally, would concern 
whatever terms or doctrines seemed to require a word of 
illustration ; while the last would refer, evidently, to 
any additions to the statements of Schwegler that might 
appear eligible. Critically, again, the intention was, as 
regards statement, to have compared the text of Schwe- 
gler, 1, with the original philosophers ; 2, with Hegel ; 
and 3, with the German Zeller, Erdmann, and Ueberweg, 
with the English Maurice, Butler, Lewes, Grote, Ferrier, 
and with the European Brandis. It presently appeared, 
however, that this scheme was out of all proportion to 
the nature and dimensions of Schwegler's, or any other, 
compend. Nay, what has been done will show that, in 
the end, even much more moderate views proved imprac- 
ticable — so far, that is, as concerns a complete annotation 
of the text of Schwegler. As, however, works that are 
intended to exhaust the alphabet, have generally achieved 
the bulk of their labour with the first half-dozen letters, 
so, here, notes that terminate with the Sophists, may 
prove serviceable even in the very latest sections. 1 The 
result of my critical comparison is, that Schwegler's 
is at once the fullest and the shortest, the deepest and 
the easiest, the most trustworthy and the most elegant, 
compendium that exists in either language. (Of auy 
French compendium up to the date I know not.) Hegel's 
interpretation of the history of philosophy, which, if the 
darkest, is also the most valuable in existence, is of course 
the backbone of all the others that are of any importance, 

1 The reference is to the first edition. The notes are now com- 
pleted. 



S4G ANNOTATIONS. 

and will, in all probability, remain such for several gene- 
rations to come, or until a new philosophy has removed 
another seal from the vision of Humanity into its own 
past. Brandis, Ueberweg, Zeller, Erdmann have, with 
Schwegler, worthily done their parts in expanding into 
the necessary breadth, or contracting into the necessary 
point, whether for intelligibleness or comprehensiveness. 
Nor are these the only Germans who have laboured in 
the same service. Others, also historians of philosophy, 
some before, some since Hegel, such as Brucker, Buhle, 
Tennemann, Wendt, Ast, Rixner, Schleiermacher, Bitter, 
Marbach, Braniss, Sigwart, Reinhold, Fries, Trendelen- 
burg, Chalybaeus, Michelet (and these are not all), may 
be at least named. In this connexion the Germans, in- 
deed, are so exhaustive and complete, whether as regards 
intelligence or research, that they have left the English 
absolutely nothing to do but translate their text and 
copy their erudition into notes, so that of the latter 
those are the best who are the faithfulest to the former. 
Would only that the faithfulness of any of them were 
always a satisfactory faithfulness J This I may say, 
however, that, had Ferrier lived, he had it in him — pos- 
sibly with one exception — infinitely to outshine them all. 
The others have each his own merit, nevertheless. But- 
ler's Lectures are eloquent and interesting, and the Notes 
of their most accomplished and competent Editor are 
accurate and valuable. The work of Professor Maurice 
ought to be read by every one, as well for the extensive 
reading it indicates, as for the admirable spirit and 
fascinating facility in which it is written. (During this 
annotation, I have had all the parts of the * Moral and 
Metaphysical Philosophy* beside me, only, unfortu- 
nately, not the First) It were superfluous to praise 
the writing, the erudition, or the labour of Mr. Grote. 
As regards his German guides, however, I could have 
wished that he had been always as true to their insight 
as he is to their erudition ; I confess, indeed, that it was 
a particular pain to me to perceive that Mr. Grote's philo- 
sophy extended only to what of Aufhldrung the Germans 
contained, and not to — the last lesson — their correction 
of it. In availing myself, for the conclusory note on 
Comte, of Mr. Mill's first essay on that writer in the 
Westminster Review, I have enjoyed the guidance of his 
calm, impartial faculty. One can always praise the 
4 History ' of Mr. Lewes for its clearness and intelligible- 



GEXERAL IDEA. 347 

ness. It is uneven, however — probably from the circum- 
stances of its genesis — and reminds of the lumpy glass 
that we see in cottage-windows. Be the book as it may, 
it is always a pleasure to recognise the kindly and candid 
nature of the man. Mr. Lewes, 1 as regards Hegel, pro- 
fesses to be unchanged in opinion, and to have expressed 
in his last edition the same views as in his earlier ones. 
One can see, however, both an improved interest in, and 
an improved understanding of, Hegelian dicta — Being 
and Nothing, for example, — and one would like to believe, 
notwithstanding his intimations to the contrary, that 
some recent English works on German philosophy have 
not been quite wholly in vain for Mr. Lewes, whether as 
regards Hegel or as regards Kant. 



I. — General Idea of the History of Philosophy. 

AS regards expression there does not seem much in 
this section that requires explanation. The phrase 
what is given, or what is given in experience, refers to 
what is usually expressed in English by what is just 
found, or what we just find to be so and so : that is, then, 
the direct fact that stands before sense. Philosophy, 
like the sciences usually so called, is dependent for an 
object of consideration, in the first place, on what the 
senses supply. Philosophy, however, is not to be under- 
stood as a result of ordinary induction. Philosophy has, 
in a general reference to the whole vast universe, to do 
simply with the connective tissue, so to speak, that not 
only supports, but even in a measure constitutes, the 
various organs : this connective tissue may be viewed as 
a ■ diamond net ' sunk into the empirical body or mass. 
Now to arrive at this supporting (or even constitutive) 
diamond tree or net, philosophy is not dependent on in- 
duction, but has a method of its own. This must be 
always borDe in mind, even when the connexion of philo- 
sophy with the sciences is insisted on. 

Zeller will be found to support Schwegler in disputing 
the Hegelian correlation of philosophy and the history 
of philosophy. This is possible to neither, however, in 
the state of his convictions, without an involuntary con- 
tradiction, as is seen at once when we find that both, 
despite what they say, would still reduce the history of 

1 History of Philosophy, Pref., p. vii. and voL il p. 556, last note 
(3d edn.) 



348 ANNOTATIONS. 

philosophy to organization, — that is, to reason, — or, in 
other words, to philosophy. If history, indeed, were to 
be regarded as mere contingency, which, consequently, 
conditioned thought, and were not conditioned by it, 
then the fundamental principle of the Hegelian philo- 
sophy, and that philosophy itself, would require to be 
abandoned. Rather than this, surely it is better to 
account for lacunce by the unavoidable imperfections 
both of philosophy and the history of philosophy as yet. 
It is perfectly well known to Zeller, as it was to 
Schwegler, that externality, as externality, is to Hegel, 
in its very nature, notion and necessity, contingent and 
fortuitous. Hegel could not expect, therefore, either 
nature (which is externality in space), or history (which 
is externality in time), to constitute, in its own form, a 
system or a progress that should present a single intel- 
lectual scheme. Nay, his own express words are ( Gesch. 
d. Phil. i. p. 326) : — ' Although the evolution of philo- 
sophy in history must correspond to the evolution of 
logical philosophy, there will still be loci in the latter, 
which disappear in the historical movement.' Never- 
theless, he held nature and history to be substantially or 
at bottom but the one the exemplification and the other 
the evolution of thought ; and he called to his students, 
as they would be 'serious with the belief of a divine 
government of the world/ to trust in the possibility of 
philosophy demonstrating this. Without presupposition, 
indeed, of a progressive organic idea to underlie all his- 
tory, whether political, religious, or philosophical, what 
meaning were there in the universe at all ? And with- 
out presupposition of this meaning, what were philo- 
sophy? It were absurd to try to think what has no 
thought in it. That Hegel's chain of logical categories 
can only partially and interruptedly be demonstrated to 
underlie the phenomenal contingency, whether of nature 
or of history — it is patent that this must have been as 
evident to Hegel himself as to his two critics, and it 
follows from his own principles that he would not have 
claimed more. The idea, if not constitutively, or even in 
strictness, regulatively, is at least substantively present in 
history. Distortion in time Hegel himself admits. That 
Zeller should demand the 'logical Gerippe,' the 'red 
strand of necessity,' and Schwegler the conception of 
the philosophy of history as 'unity of a single process, 1 
which Hegel demands, and yet that both should make 



DIVISION AND PRELIMINARY VIE W. 349 

believe to reject Hegel — this, plainly, is but gratuitous 
contradiction. In Schwegler, indeed, this contradiction 
is a contradiction in terms ; for how can that which is 
'true in principle' be also ' unjustifiable in principle' ? 
It is to miss Hegel not to see everywhere the single 
necessity of reason. The (philosophically) perfectly ripe 
Erdmann maintains in his historical Grundriss that ' in 
all philosophies only the one philosophy unfolds itself.' 
To Ferrier, too, the history of philosophy is but ' phil- 
osophy itself taking its time.' 1 



II. and III. — Division and Preliminary View. 

ANY terms in these sections for which illustration may 
be desirable will find a more suitable place again. 
The exclusion of all the preliminary discussions that 
usually precede Thales, will be felt a boon by most 
readers, as will also the elimination of Scholasticism. 
What is known of Oriental philosophy is best studied in 
the works specially occupied with it. I would earnestly 
recommend all students, if possible, however, to read the 
introduction to Zeller's comprehensive work on the his- 
tory of philosophy among the Greeks. Of this work, 
Ferrier says that ' it is too much pervaded, particularly 
in those places where clearness is most required, by that 
obscurity, indeed, I may say, unintelligibility, which 
seems to be inseparable from the philosophical lucubra- 
tions of our Teutonic neighbours.' With this opinion I 
cannot at all agree ; he who runs may read the section 
in question, or, indeed, any section in the whole book, 
and with perfect intelligence. As for Scholasticism, 
when one considers that the printed writings of Albertus 
Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus alone occupy 
fifty-one folio volumes, one feels glad to be delivered 
from it, and for so good a reason as that of Schwegler. 
The reader ought to know, however, that the study of 
Scholasticism has now come into full mode, not only in 
Germany but also in France. In this country, too, we 
see the same tendency in the Patristic studies of Dr. 
Donaldson and others. The most complete students here 
seem to be Prantl, Haur^au, Erdmann, Ueberweg, Huber, 
Stbckl, and others : in Erdmann's admirable Grundriss 
there is an ample original study. It is obvious, in- 
deed, that the union at once of oriental and occidental 



350 ANNOTATIONS. 

principles in the principle of Christianity, and then the 
gradual evolution of the last during so many ages of 
seclusion to the supersensual world will constitute a study 
of great interest. Erdmann views the Theosophy of the 
middle ages as a necessary complement to the Cosmo- 
sophy of the ancients, and both as equally necessary for 
the completion of modern philosophy. More on this sub- 
ject cannot well be said here. As for the preliminary 
view, the reader will gain by a return to it after he has 
gone through the whole of pre-Socratic philosophy. At 
the beginning of 4, we read that the ' first or analytic,' 
is now to give place to the ' second or synthetic period,' 
and yet we are told, at the end of it, that the first prin- 
ciple of the new period is analytically acquired and, in its 
application, the first of the sort ! One is apt to replace 
analytically by synthetically here ; but we find from p. 
107 that to Schwegler that is analytic which is obtained 
from observation of nature. Now Heraclitus was pro- 
bably led to his principle so, and his was certainly a 
first attempt to explain ' the movement of existence.' 
Yet the attempt itself was a synthesis (of being and non- 
being). 



IV. — The Earlier Ionic Philosophers. 

I HAVE compared the brief statements of Schwegler 
here with the longer ones of Hegel, Zeller, Grote, 
Lewes, etc., and can assure the reader that they contain 
all that in my view of it is worth knowing on the sub- 
ject. In Hegel, for example, though Schwegler's five para- 
graphs are represented by twenty-four pages, this result 
is, for the most part, attained by a wider extension rather 
than by a greater fulness, in the matter of dates, events, 
authorities, quotations, and what is called in general 
the literature of the subject. There is certainly in Hegel 
as well a fuller and freer discussion of the pertinent 
doctrines ; but even so Schwegler's reader has little to 
gain, unless as regards interesting glimpses into Hegel's 
own philosophy, to which, perhaps, we shall refer again. 
The recently published * Lectures on Greek Philo- 
sophy/ by the late lamented Professor Ferrier, will well 
reward perusal by the British reader here, so far as 
perfect lucidity and general charm of statement are con- 
cerned. A similar praise can always be extended to Mr. 



THE EARLIER IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. 351 

Lewes, and the relative paragraphs of Mr. Grote's Plato 
constitute an exceedingly able compend. Zeller is 
quite complete, as usual, in details and references ; and 
Erdmann reflective and exact. Mr. Grote seems oftenest 
to differ from the rest in the matter of dates : his date 
for Thales, for example, is 620-560, B.C., while Hegel and 
Erdmann agree with Schwegler, to whom the others also 
come nearer though differing somewhat among them- 
selves. 

The most important difference, however, is that of 
Hitter as regards the place of Anaximander, a difference 
which is adopted by Mr. Lewes and Professor Butler. 
Of this difference, it is enough to remark, perhaps, that 
it seems universally abandoned now, and that the reasons 
alleged by Zeller and Erdmann are surely quite suffi- 
cient. 

Schwegler and Hegel appear less complete than the 
others only in reference to Diogenes of Apollonia. Mr. 
Lewes remarks (vol. i. p. 10) that ' Hegel, by a strange 
oversight, says that we know nothing of Diogenes but 
the name.' Now (for his part, Schwegler says nothing 
at all of Diogenes), what Hegel does say is this : — 
1 Diogenes of Apollonia, Hippasus, Archelaus are also 
named as Ionic philosophers ; we know only their names, 
however, and that they adhered to one or other of the prin- 
ciples. 9 If any one will examine the state of the case as 
regards Diogenes in what is said of his age and opinions, 
and in the manner in which, as a philosopher, he is 
characterized by the two main authorities, Diogenes 
Laertius and Aristotle, he will have no dificulty in per- 
ceiving that there was no ' oversight ' with Hegel ; that, 
on the contrary, he was quite aware both of what he 
did and of his reasons for what he did. Schleiermacher 
it was who had called particular attention to this Dio- 
genes ; it is explanation, but not justification, to say 
that Hegel, while averse to disturb his Ionic cycle of 
three, would not be apt to feel less averse in a case 
where Schleiermacher was concerned. Full justification, 
however, is extended by this, that whatever additional 
knowledge Diogenes may seem to possess in consequence 
of living as late as Anaxagoras, he really was, philo- 
sophically, no more than an adherent of Anaximenes. 
Any philosophical advance attributed to Diogenes over 
Anaximenes, the latter, according to Hegel, already pos- 
sessed. Erdmann will be found not to dissent from this 



352 ANNO TA TIONS. 

view ; and even Schleiermacher in the end came to re- 
gard Diogenes as a ' principlosen Eklektiker,' whose 
place was among the Sophists and Atomists. In fact, 
to interpose this Diogenes between Anaximenes and the 
Pythagoreans is to produce on the history of philosophy 
the effect of a disturbing upthrow. This being the case, 
and as he contains no principle of his own, but only mixes 
up those of Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, etc. , I hold Schweg- 
ler to be perfectly right in not even naming him. Diogenes 
certainly refers to many physical details that may prove 
peculiarly interesting to Mr. Grote and Mr. Lewes ; but 
these details belong not to philosophy proper; and if 
Diogenes is to be admitted, why not also Hippo, Idaeus, 
etc. ? Contrary to the opinion of Mr. Lewes, then, it is 
for critical, and not ' uncritical, ' reasons, that Diogenes 
of Apollonia should be ' made to represent no epoch 
whatever.' Referring to the unsuccess of the earlier 
Greek philosophers, Mr. Lewes observes, 'but, as Mr. 
Grote remarks, the memorable fact is that they made 
the attempt.' The remark belongs to Zeller {see vol. i. 
p. 156). 

In connexion with the Ionics, Hegel names Pherecydes, 
of whom it is enough to know, however, that he is said 
to have been the teacher of Pythagoras. 



V. — The Pythagoreans. 

AFTER due comparison of the various authorities, I 
am disposed to claim for Schwegler here also 
complete presentation of the fruit. Zeller, who has 150 
pages for Schwegler's 3, runs out in them into great 
breadth of reference and discussion ; but, after all, there 
is the same result. Erdmann passes from the Physio- 
logists to the Mathematicians by a transition that is very 
ingenious : — 'If all multiplicity,' he says, 'is explained 
by thickening and thinning, the mind that reflects and 
reasons with itself, must pass to the result, that all 
differences of nature have become distinctions for it of 
the simpler and the more manifold, the less and the 
more, that is, distinctions of number.' This he equally 
ingeniously connects with Plato's one and many. 
Ferrier's statement of the Pythagoreans, — well- written, 
as usual, like the other English statements,— is inferior 
to his previous one on the Ionics. Some of his remarks 



THE P YTHA GOREANS. 353 

are incorrect, and his illustrations out of place. Hegel 
opposes, more than once, Aristotle and Sextus Empiricus, 
as the genuine students of, and authorities od, Pytha- 
goras, to his neo-Platonic biographers as the spurious 
ones ; Ferrier opposes Aristotle as the genuine to Sextus 
Empiricus as the neo-Platonic and the spurious. Ferrier 
has probably found Hegel even more than usually un- 
yielding here. Here, indeed, Hegel is both unyielding 
and diffuse (46 pages), but of the greatest value both as 
regards the Pythagorean philosophy and his own. What 
a world of living reality we are in when we read an 
original writer, a princeps ! One feels this when one 
passes from the rest, however genuine each may be in 
his way, to Hegel. (It is pleasant to see Mr. Lewes 
contrive to extract an occasional little edge from amid 
the impracticable blocks of this Sphinx, — as when he 
speaks of an Egypt unable to measure its own pyramids 
by help of their shadows, as having little to teach a so- 
skilled Thales, or of how we are to understand Pytha- 
goras' new term of philosopher. ) 

Of the Thaletic proposition, that water is the principle 
or absolute, Hegel — to go back a step or two — remarks, 
that it is the beginning of philosophy. His reasons for 
this are two : 1, that water (so regarded) is a universal ; 
and, 2, that it is real, or exists in rerum natura. It is a 
universal, for all other things are referred to, or resolved 
into it ; and, in such a position, it only is, and can only 
be, a Gedanke (which is not only a thought, but as a 
thought truly is, a Ge-danke, a putting or bringing together 
of things). Philosophy, then, has, in the conception of 
Thales, at last found its beginning ; for the principle of 
philosophy must not be abstract, but concrete, — that is, at 
once universal and particular. Such evidently would be the 
nature of water, could all things be demonstrably reduced 
to it. This will render intelligible, perhaps, some of 
Hegel's apparently impenetrable utterances under Thales : 
as when in reference to the formlessness of the principle 
(and water is formless) he says, ' "While to the senses 
each thing stands there in its own individuality, now 
(according to Thales, that is) objective actuality is to be 
placed in the notion that reflects itself into itself, or is 
itself to be put as notion : water is in its notion (BegrJff 
— what it implies) life, and so appears in mental (spiritual) 
wise.' The last point refers plainly to water as process. 
It throws light on the word speculative to be told that 
z 



354 ANNO TA TI0N8. 

water (in the present reference, that is) has not sensuous 
but only speculative universality ; the latter because it 
is now in the form of notion, and the elements of sense 
are as it were sublated into it. It is evident, too, that, 
as water is here regarded as at once universal and real, 
the Thaletic proposition expresses the absolute as unity 
of thought and being (Einheit des Gedarikens und Seyns). 
Again, it is instructive to be told that the principle, if 
true, cannot remain an idle universal but must possess 
capacity of transition into the particular. There is form 
as well as matter; there must be provision for the differ- 
ence, or there must be an absolute difference. Here how- 
ever, the only difference, the only expression of form, 
being thickening and thinning, distinction is merely quan- 
titative, merely external and inessential, and set up by 
another, or produced from without ; * it is not the inner 
difference of the notion in its own self.' These remarks 
may be regarded as hints towards Hegel's own purposes : 
when he explains the world to us, it will be by a principle 
that is real, that is universal, and that possesses within 
itself capacity of difference into all that is. We under- 
stand him then, when he finds the principle of Anaxi- 
mander an advance on that of Thales, for it is no longer 
' a certain finite something, but a universality that negates 
the finite.' Hegel enables us to regard Anaximander as 
the earliest Darwinian : he conceives man to develop 
from a fish, etc., 'Develop (Hervorgehen), 9 says Hegel, 
i comes forward in recent times also ; it is a mere after 
one another in time — a form, with which a man often be- 
lieves himself to say something brilliant ; but for all 
that there is no necessity, no thought, no notion in it.' 
Would not one think Hegel had read Darwin ? 

As regards Anaximenes also, Hegel notices the advance 
from the material to the true or spiritual element. But 
it is here (under the Pythagoreans), probably, that we 
shall find the most enlightening remarks of any yet. Mat- 
ter, which even before was, as reflexion into conscious- 
ness, a thing of consciousness, is now wholly withdrawn. 
With much that the Pythagorean numbers represent 
Hegel agrees ; but numbers are still external, stiff, im- 
movable, without process in themselves, and he demon- 
strates them to be incapable of expressing the absolute 
form. Such symbols are to Hegel hard, and he exclaims 
that * nothing has the softness of thought but thought 
itself.' ' Short in his own way,' then, as he says himself 



THE P YTHA GOREANS. 355 

of Aristotle, he 'demolishes' the cheap profundity that lies 
in the symbolism of numbers. ' Numbers,' he says, * have 
been much used as expressions of ideas. This on one side 
has a look of depth. For that another meaning is im- 
plied in them than they immediately present, is seen at 
once ; but how much is implied in them is known neither 
by him who proposes, nor by him who tries to understand, 
as, for instance, in the case of the witches' rhyme (one 
time one) in Goethe's Faust. The more obscure the 
thoughts, the deeper they seem ; the thing is that what 
is most essential, but also what is hardest, namely, the 
expression of one's-self in definite notions, precisely that 
the proposer spares himself.' It is impossible to tell, 
he says again of the latter Pythagoreans, * how much 
they toiled, as well to express philosophical thoughts in 
a numerical system, as to understand those expressions 
w T hich they received from others, and to discover in them 
every possible meaning.' But the curious point is that 
Hegel himself adopts this very numerical symbolism, so 
far as it suits the system ! It is only, indeed, when that 
agreement fails, that the agreement of Hegel fails also. 
The moment it does fail, however, his impatience breaks 
out. The one, the two, the three, he contentedly, even 
warmly and admiringly, accepts, nay, ' as far as five,' he 
says, ' there may well be something like a thought, in 
numbers, but on from six there are simply arbitrary deter- 
minations ! ' 

Hegel is quite consistent with himself, however, and 
believes numbers, to the extent he says, applicable in 
expression of the absolute relation. 'Everything,' he 
says, ' is essentially only this, that it has in it oneness 
and twoness, and as well their antithesis as their con- 
nexion,' and this is intelligible to every one who perceives 
that oneness stands for identity, and twoness for differ- 
ence. He points out that the Trinity is only unintelli- 
gible when conceived as three separate numerical units, 
while speculatively it involves an absolute and divine 
sense : 'it would be a strange thing if there were no 
sense in what for two thousand years has been the 
holiest Christian idea.' But people do not know what 
they themselves say. When they say matter, they per- 
ceive not that they have named what can exist in 
thought alone, and what, therefore, is immaterial. 

I cannot resist extracting further one or two exoteric 
passages that are in Hegel's best manner. In regard to 



356 ANNOTATIONS. 

the Pythagorean injunction to review morning and even 
ing our actions of the past day, etc., he says, * True 
discipline is not this vanity of directing so much atten- 
tion to itself, and of occupying itself with itself as an 
individual ; but that self-forgettingness that absorbs 
itself in the thing itself, and in the interest of the uni- 
versal : it is only this considerateness in regard to the 
thing in hand that is necessary, while that dangerous, 
useless anxiousness destroys freedom.' Hegel naturally 
is better pleased with the Pythagorean prescript to ' stop 
chatter and take to learning ; ' he says, ' This duty, to 
keep -in one's talk can be named an essential condition of 
all culture and all learning ; one must begin by becom- 
ing capable of taking up the thoughts of others, and of 
renouncing one's own fancies. It is usually said that the 
understanding is developed by questions, objections, 
answers, etc. ; in effect, however, it is not thus formed, 
but externally made. Man's inwardness is what is won 
and widened in true culture ; he grows not poorer in 
thoughts or in quickness of mind by silently containing 
himself. He learns rather thereby ability to take up, 
and acquires perception of the worthlessness of his own 
conceits and objections; and as the perception of the 
worthlessness of such conceits grows, he breaks himself 
of the having of them.' The hecatomb sacrificed by 
Pythagoras on discovery of the theorem that bears 
his name is highly relished by Hegel : ' it was a feast 
of spiritual cognition — at cost of the oxen ! ' He 
never thinks of the mathematicians quoting Ovid in 
proof of Pythagoras' prohibition of animal slaughter, 
and in consequent disproof of the possibility of the 
sacrifice. 

In reference to the peculiar external habits and dress 
of Pythagoras, he says very sensibly, ' These are no 
longer of any consequence ; we allow ourselves to be 
guided by the general custom and fashion, because it is 
quite indifferent not to have a will of one's own here : 
we give the contingent a prize to the contingent, and 
obey that external rationality that just consists in iden- 
tity and universality.' 

A tolerable instance of Hegelian ingenuity occurs also, 
in a previous section, with reference to Aristotle's colla- 
tion of the water of Thales with the oath of the gods by 
the Styx : — ' This ancient tradition is susceptible of a 
speculative interpretation. "When something cannot be 



THE ELBA TICS. 357 

proved, — that is, when objective monstration fails, as in 
reference to a payment the receipt, or in reference to an 
act the witnesses of it, — then the oath, this certification 
of myself, must, as an object, declare that my evidence 
is absolute truth. As now, by way of confirmation, one 
swears by what is best, by what is absolutely sure, and 
as the gods swore by the subterranean water, there seems 
to be implied here this, that the essential principle of 
pure thought, the innermost being, the reality in which 
consciousness has its truth, is water ; I declare, as it were, 
this pure certainty of my own self as object, as God.' 
This (without mention of Hegel) is found exceedingly 
well rendered by Ferrier. 



VI— The Eleatlcs. 

A "WORD on Melissus will complete the list of these. 
Melissus, a Samian like Pythagoras, a friend of 
Heraclitus and probably a disciple of Parmenides, a 
statesman, an admiral, etc., nourished about 444 B.C. 
He wrote a book in prose on nature, fragments of which 
have been preserved by Simplicius, and collected by 
Brandis. Melissus appears to have reached considerably 
more definiteness than Parmenides ; but, on the whole, 
the import is in both the same. Hegel says, 'What 
Xenophanes began, Parmenides and Melissus improved, 
and what these taught Zeno completed.* The Editor of 
Butler's Lectures objects that ' Melissus rather corrupted 
than "completed" the Eleatic system.' Corrupted con- 
trasts with Hegel's ' improved (weiter ausgebildet)? and 
is not justified by the very reference in support. Aris- 
totle's reproach of 'a little more rough' in the metaphysics 
(or the word 'coarse* elsewhere) probably applies, as 
Hegel thinks, to the manner rather than to the matter of 
Melissus. Zeller and Erdmann, both implying a certain 
advance on the part of Melissus, seem to admit to his 
prejudice only a colour, so to speak, caught by him from 
simple contact with his adversaries the Physicists. 
Zeller holds him essentially to agree both with Par- 
menides and Zeno, though he refers at the same time to 
his ' not quite insignificant deviation from Parmenides.' 
This deviation, however, is limited to the doctrine of the 
infinitude of the One, and does not extend to the materi- 
ality of the One, which latter is no doctrine of Meli&sus, 



358 ANNOTATIONS. 

but simply an inference of Aristotle. Zeller, it is true, 
even while quoting Melissus himself on the One being 
without body, extension, or parts, seems to justify 
Aristotle in this very inference, as well as to conceive 
the reproach of Aristotle to relate both to the assump- 
tion of the infinitude of the One on the part of Melissus 
and to his relative reasoning in support. Hegel, how- 
ever, as we have seen, evidently thinks very highly of 
Melissus, and is at pains to defend him. He says that 
the fragments of Melissus contain the same thoughts and 
arguments as those of Parmenides, only ' in part some- 
thing more developed (etwas ausgefuhrter).' Of the pseudo- 
Aristotelian work, further, he says with reference to that 
part of it that is now universally held to concern 
Melissus, ' There is in it more reflection and a dialectic 
more finished in form than — judging by their verses — we 
might expect not only from Xenophanes but even from 
Parmenides.' He talks of its * cultured ratiocination,' its 
' order,' its ' precision.' But what is more to the purpose, 
he points out that, with reference to the pure principle, 
Being or One, the distinction of matter and thought falls 
away, while, as regards the unlimitedness of Melissus and 
the limitedness of Parmenides, it is Parmenides and not 
Melissus who is in fault : ' This limitedness of the One 
would, in effect, directly contradict the philosophy of 
Parmenides ' . . . ' but the poetical diction of Par- 
menides is not always exact ' . . . ' and his doctrine of 
opinion was more against Being as principle of thought 
than was the case with Melissus.' In general, indeed, Hegel 
finds reconciliation in thought for much that is contra- 
dictory in expression to Zeller. Thus Hegel takes no 
offence at the pseudo- Aristotle describing the Eleatic 
One as 'globe-shaped,' * neither limited nor unlimited,' 
' neither moved nor unmoved,' etc., whereas Zeller cannot 
wrest himself free from the contradictions implied. Mr. 
Lewes finds it ' difficult to understand the Rational unity 
as limited by itself;' but, unlike Zeller, he finds the 
idea of a sphere to resolve the contradiction. The ego, 
too, it is worth pointing out, is such a sphere, it is the 
absolute limit ; and yet it is absolute unlimitedness. 

We pass to a word on the Eleatic argumentation, and 
the terms it involves. As for the former (the argumen- 
tation), it is shortly this :— What is, can neither originate 
in that which it is, nor in that which it is not ; for in 
the one case, movement there were none, and in the 



THE ELEATICS. 359 

other, movement were impossible. This is the problem 
of origination in general, and concerns difficulties which, 
apart from Hegel, still exist. In ultimate abstraction, it 
may (suggestively, perhaps) stand thus : — Neither iden- 
tity can issue from identity, nor difference from differ- 
ence ; for in the first case there were no difference, and 
in the second no identity. The one-sided conclusion of 
the Eleatics here was that there is only identity (Being), 
and that difference (Non-being) there is none. As regards 
terms now, then, the meaning of beent and non-beent will 
perhaps present no difficulty. Beent with its Saxon root 
and its Latin termination, to say nothing of the diaeresis, 
is an ugly mongrel, and non-beent is still worse. Both 
have been avoided as much as possible, and would gladly 
have been dispensed with. It may be said, why not have 
adopted existent and non-existent ? But when it is con- 
sidered that the beent is, strictly, the non-existent, and 
the existent the non-beent, it will be readily seen that 
this could not have been always possible. That which 
truly is in the life of this great universe could not, the 
Eleatics thought, be existent, for the existent, as an ever- 
changeful becoming, contains an element of difference or 
negation. It must, then, be described as only beent, as 
possessed of identity or affirmation alone. This distinc- 
tion was identified by Plato with that which separates 
the ideas from the world of sense. The genera of things, 3 
the ideas, as unchangeable, replaced for him the pure 
being of the Eleatics, while things themselves, as mere 
becoming and perpetual change, were but the non-beent, 
the simply existent. We may illustrate this by referring 
to astronomy. The sun, planets, comets, etc., are existent 
astronomy, they are in continual change, they never re- 
turn twice the same ; but their science, their laws, are 
beent astronomy. And as it was to Plato, so it is to 
Hegel. The main principle in the physiology of Virchow 
is the connective tissue (the Bindegewebe). This tissue 
so runs through the anatomical frame that the rest of it 
(organs and all) are but contained in, or even constituted 
by it. Philosophy — in priority to Virchow — had endea- 
voured to demonstrate the sustentation of the whole crass 
universe in even such a diamond net of connective tissue 
under the name of ' Logic.' The meaning of the terms 
in question will now, then, be completely plain. No ob- 
ject is exposed to the senses that is not a process. The 
same sun never shone twice. Leibnitz says of things : 




360 ANNOTATIONS. 

semper generantur, et nunquam sunt The Eleatics, 
then, simply refused to believe in this changeableness aa 
the principle of the world : they assumed a One in the 
universe, beside which all change (difference, negation, 
non-being) must be but appearance and subjective mis- 
take. The signification indicated as assigned to being 
here in contradistinction from becoming is held fast by 
Schwegler pretty well throughout. Opposed to the ele- 
ment of thought, however, being takes on a sense of 
palpable, tangible, durable breadth. Examples of such 
sense of the word will be found especially in the sections 
on Fichte and Herbart. Professor Ferrier gives very 
felicitous expression (vol. i. p. 82) to the distinction be- 
tween being and non-being : — * This antithesis is merely 
a variety of expression for the antithesis between reason 
and sense : or if we may distinguish between the two 
forms of the opposition, we may say that the one expres- 
sion, the permanent and the changeable, or the tv and 
the iroWd, denotes the antithesis in its objective form; 
the other expression, reason and sense, denotes the an- 
tithesis in its subjective form. , The tv and iroWd are 
Platonic (firstly Pythagorean) forms, but what is said 
perfectly applies. Another excellent glance of Mr. Fer- 
rier is this (p. 85) : — ' Whatever epithet or predicate is 
applied to one of the terms of the antithesis, the counter- 
predicate must be applied to the other term.' At page 
87 also we have some felicitous illustration. It may be 
well, at the same time, to place a remark here in refer- 
ence to Ferrier's test of philosophical truth, that it is 
truth, namely, ' for all and not for some,' truth for all 
intelligence, not truth for such only as is accompanied 
by senses like our own. This appears everywhere in 
Ferrier as the criterion he has derived from the Germans 
in regard to necessary thought. This is not to name the 
distinction concerned rightly, however, which is that of 
being (the necessary, permanent, underlying and pervad- 
ing, connective tissue of ideas) and of non-being or be- 
coming (the contingent vicissitude of sensuous things). 
Hegel knows only one kind of thought, and believes that 
that thought can only have these senses. Ferrier seems 
to accept the possibility, not only of senses, but even of 
an intelligence, different from ours. 

Mr. Lewes, when he says (vol. i. p. 55) that the asser- 
tion non -being is impossible, ' amounts to saying that 
non-existence cannot exist : a position which may appear 



THE ELEATICS. 361 

extremely trivial to the reader not versed in metaphysi- 
cal pursuits, ' etc., would seem not to have the true dis- 
tinction between being and non-being very clearly before 
him. The same author, alone mentioning Hegel's appa- 
rently well-founded doubts as to the proofs of Xeno- 
phanes' connexion with. Elea, disagrees very widely with 
Hegel as regards interpretation of the text of Aristotle 
that (Metaph. I. 5) represents Xenophanes as looking els 
top 6\oi> ovpavbv. i The state of bis (Xenophanes') mind 
(says Mr. Lewes, vol. i. p. 44) is graphically painted in 
that one phrase of Aristotle's : " casting his eyes up- 
wards at the immensity of heaven, he declared that the 
One is God," Overarching him was the deep blue, in- 
finite vault, immoveable, unchangeable, embracing him 
and all things ; that he proclaimed to be God.' Mr. 
Lewes then proceeds to strengthen and widen this posi- 
tion by further poetic hypostasis of the physical sky. 
Hegel, on the other hand, who also indeed talks of a 
Blane, translates the passage thus : — ' but, looking into 
the whole beaven — as we say into the air (ins 
Blaue hinein) — be said, God is the One.' Hegel's 
reading of the whole passage, indeed, may be re- 
presented as running thus. Parmenides having said 
that the One was limited, and Melissus that it was un- 
limited, Xenophanes, for his part (in Aristotle's words), 
ovdh 8ieaa<pT)VL<T€j/, nowise declared or determined, nor 
seemed to tend to either opinion, but, looking round 
him generally, said, the One is God. Compared with the 
context which concerns a comparison of opinions, this in- 
terpretation of Hegel seems reasonable. Zeller, also 
(vol. i. p. 372, 1, and p. 385, 1), appears to support the 
same view, thougb he speaks of the vault of heaven in 
the text of the latter page. Mr. Lewes differs (vol. L 
p. 53) from other critics in his translation of a celebrated 
text of Parmenides. Perhaps it may be well, however, 
to refer to Zeller's note (vol. i. p. 414), since, thougb 
probably settling the matter, it is not mentioned by Mr. 
Lewes. Aristotle, no doubt, quotes the text in question 
as relevant to the subject of the relativity of judgments 
of sensation : and it is certainly very natural to quote an 
Eleatic as arguing against sense or non-being. But surely 
Mr. Lewes introduces quite a new idea when he conceives 
Parmenides to have in mind the dependence of thought on 
organization. Kef erring to the varying opinions of man- 
kind, Parmenides says, as is the mixture of the two ele- 



362 ANNOTATIONS. 

ments (the warm and the cold) in men, so is their thought 
(knowledge), with the obvious inference that $6£a,, sensu- 
ous opinion, is not trustworthy. It is not the modern con- 
ception of organization then that Parmenides has in mind, 
but simply the variety of our actual states, and as ex- 
plained by variety of intermixture in his two elements. 
With this interpretation it is quite in harmony that Par- 
menides should have conceived, even after disappearance 
of the warm element, sensation to remain in the corpse, 
though only of the cold and dark ; but will such concep- 
tion harmonize with the idea of organization, with the 
idea of thought as resultant from organization ? It is a 
bold statement, then, this, that Parmenides 'had as dis- 
tinct a conception of this celebrated theory as any of his 
successors,' and it seems unnatural to propose for the 
simple words rb yap ir\£ov i<rrl vbrj/xa (for the more is the 
thought), a translation so cumbrous as this, ' the highest 
degree of organization gives the highest degree of thought.' 
It is very improbable that any such conception ever 
occurred to Parmenides. Zeller accepts (and Hegel, by 
quoting and translating the whole passage, already coun- 
tenanced him in advance) the equivalent of Theophrastus 
for rb ir\£ov, rb virepfiaXkov namely, and interprets the 
clause itself thus : — ' The preponderating element of the 
two is thought, occasions and determines the ideas ; ' that 
is, as is the preponderating element (the warm or the 
cold) so is the state of mind. In short, the more is the 
thought is the linguistic equivalent of the time, for accord- 
ing to the more is the thought. 1 Mr. Lewes, further, in 
prosecution of the same view, translates and explains in 
his own way (vol. i. p. 56), the celebrated verses of Par- 
menides that seem to assert the identity of being and 
thought. (They will be found at page 346, vol. i. of But- 
ler's Lectures, translated by the Editor.) Hegel, too, 
(Gesch. d. Phil. P. i. p. 274), translates the same verses, 
and adds his interpretation. It is almost amusing to see 
the difference : while Mr. Lewes conceives that what is 
referred to is ' the identity of human thought and sensa- 
tion, both of these being merely transitory modes of exist- 
ence,' Hegel boldly exclaims, 'That is the main thought ; 
thought produces itself, and what is produced is a thought ; 
thought is therefore identical with its being, for there is 
nothing besides being, that grand affirmation.' Hegel 
also adds from Plotinus, — ■ Parmenides adopted this con- 
ception inasmuch as he placed not Being in sensuous 
1 See Preface, p. xi. 



THE ELEATICS. 363 

things ; for identifying being with thought, he maintained 
it to be immutable.' In this view of the identity in 
question, thought plainly is no mere transitory mode of 
existence, but, like Being itself, immutable. As we have 
seen, indeed, to Plato and to Hegel it is Being. Mr. 
Grote, too, is worth quoting on this identity of being 
and thought. At p. 23, voL i. of his * Plato,' he says : 
* Though he and others talk of this Something as an Ab- 
solute {i.e. apart from or independent of his own think- 
ing mind), yet he also uses some juster language (rb yap 
avrb voeiv £<jtiv re kqX dvai), showing that it is really rela- 
tive.' Mr. Grote implies here that the meaning of Par- 
menides is, not that being and thinking are identical, but 
that the elvai, the object, depends on, or is relative to, 
the voeiv, the subject. The bold nonchalant air of a mat- 
ter of course with which, though knowing all the relative 
opinions, he thus assumes his own as the only one, is 
striking, and reminds of Mr. Buckle. 

The learned Editor of Professor Butler's Lectures 
(vol. i. p. 348, note) is disposed to assert for Xenophanes 
not Pantheism, but pure Monotheism ; and no one who 
gives the interpretation to the words of Xenophanes, 
which is natural to its, can fail to sympathize with him. 
But the other opinion must, I apprehend, be deferred to. 
The notion of Xenophanes was doubtless developed from 
the object of perception before him ; it was a reduction 
of the phenomenal world, as it were, to a vis naturce, to a 
natural power, not to an extra-mundane spirit in relation 
to whom that phenomenal world were but as accident of 
his might. Then the natural character of the Greek 
gods, and the physical nature of all preceding philosophy 
must be considered. This view, indeed, seems to have 
been that of the various ancient authorities. Hegel says 
(Op. cit. p. 263), * We know of God as a spirit ;' and he 
proceeds to designate the position of Xenophanes ' as an 
immense step in advance . . . for Greeks who had before 
them only the world of the senses, and these gods of 
phantasy.' 

Schwegler's statement of the Zenonic antinomies is easy 
and sufficient. Mr. Lewes, while vindicating its own 
fairness for the third argument of Zeno in reference to 
motion, pronounces it nevertheless a fallacy, and even in- 
deed supposes himself to demonstrate it as no less. ■ The 
original fallacy, ' he says, * is in the supposition that 
Motion is a thing superadded, whereas, as Zeno clearly 



364 ANNOTATIONS. 

saw, it is only a condition. In a falling stone there is not 
the "stone," and a thing called "motion;" otherwise 
there would be also another thing called "rest." But 
both motion and rest are names given to express condi- 
tions of the stone.' And what of that ? It is not pro- 
bable that Zeno could have blinded himself to the problem 
that pressed by so simple an expedient as * motion is a 
condition, not a thing.' Call it a condition if you like, he 
might have said, all that I say is, that it is a condition, 
the notion of which involves a contradiction. And cer- 
tainly Mr. Lewes's allusion to a stone now at rest and 
now in motion does not remove the contradiction, or even 
— any more, that is, than the walking of Diogenes, which 
Mr. Lewes himself drives out of court — apply to it. Nay, 
in the very next sentences, Mr. Lewes would seem to 
accept what under the name of a fallacy he leads us to 
suppose he has just rejected. ' But both motion and rest 
are names given to express conditions of the stone (or of 
Diogenes !) Even rest is a positive exertion of force. 
Best is force, resisting an equivalent and opposing force. 
Motion is force triumphant. It follows that matter is 
always in motion ; which amounts to the same as Zeno's 
saying, there is no such thing as motion.' Mr. Lewes's 
conclusion we see then is, that there is no such thing as 
rest, that matter is always in motion. That is to him a 
substantial truth, and he admits that Zeno's saying 
amounts to it ; yet his single object all the time has been 
to expose the 'original fallacy.' Perhaps a 'fallacy' on 
the 'subjective method,' is now 'a fact' on the 'objec- 
tive method ? ' But why then did Mr. Lewes resist the 
latter method at the hands, or rather at the legs of 
Diogenes ? Then, apart from this, it does not at all assist 
the matter that the category of motion should be trans- 
ferred to the category of force, for the question recurs 
then again, What is force ? In fact, what is not only 
motion, or rest, or force, or condition, but what is even ' a 
thing? what a thousand other interests the like, the Logic 
of which would be specially useful to us, and which is to 
be found in Hegel alone ? 

A similar conceptive mode of thought attends us, not 
only in regard to what Mr. Lewes says further, but in 
regard to what he cites from Mr. Mill. Mr. Mill, as- 
signing to Hobbes the credit of the original distinction, 
would solve the ' Achilles ' fallacy by pointing out that 
Zeno has confounded in it ' length of time* with *m*ra- 



THE EL £ A TICS. 365 

her of subdivisions in time,' or ' an infinite time ' with. ' a 
time which is 'infinitely divisible.' Mr. Lewe3 hereupon 
very properly remarks (not without debt, possibly to 
Hegel or some commentator of Hegel *) that Aristotle 
had named the same distinction when he opposed the 
actually finite to the potentially infinite. It is not, then, 
with reference to the substantial correctness of the dis- 
tinction (for Aristotle's distinction is certainly correct, 
while those of Hobbes and Mr. Mill are essentially iden- 
tical with it), but with respect to that absence of the 
due logical terms which give not only the true names, 
but the true precision of notion, or simply the true 
notion, that we refer to the desirableness of an in- 
creased knowledge of Hegel's Logic in England. In this 
reference, indeed, we can see already the superiority of 
the answer of Aristotle to that of Mr. Mill. To oppose 
potentiality to actuality, Damely, is, so far as generaliza- 
tion or its language is concerned, a great advance on 
the opposing of subdivisions of tune to length of time. 
Aristotle, in other words, has reached the notion in its 
abstraction ; while Mr. Mill (though perfectly successful 
in effect) has reached the notion only in — so to speak — 
its sensuous concretion (figurative conception). Con- 
sultation of Hegel, however, would still very much im- 
prove intelligence here, not only for the light he brings 
to the position of Aristotle, but for that he brings also 
to the position in general. It is to Hegel, indeed, that 
we must look for the true light on all the paradoxes of 
Zeno, and it is to be hoped that the reader will not 
neglect him. Meantime, explaining that the general 
procedure of Hegel is to oppose the concrete to the abs- 
tract, we may summarize the special relative details not 
too incorrectly perhaps thus : — Quantity is a necessary 
notion of reason, and it occurs deduced in its own place in 
the science of abstract reason or logic. Now, it is the very 
nature of quantity, and as deduced, that it should have 
two moments, one of discretion (Mr. Mill's ' subdivision ') 
and one of continuity (Mr. Mill's 'length'). Any dis- 
cretion is, as quantitative, a continuum, but, as a con- 
tinuum, it contains again a possibility of discretion, and 
again of continuity, and so on endlessly. This and so on 
endlessly constitutes the spurious infinite, an infinite that 
only seems infinite, or only is infinite to sensuous opinion 
which is blind to its own procedure. That is, if I see 

* See the Secret of Hegel, vol. i. Pref. p. lii. vol. ii. pp. 269-271 ; but 
1 commentator of Hegel ' must now be gladly withdrawn (see Mr. Lewes, 
u p. 64, 4th edn.). 



360 ANNOTATIONS. 

only continuity, and again only discretion, and yet 
again only continuity, and so on, pause there is none. 
But why should I thus vainly alternate the two 
moments and deceive myself? The whole relation is 
there once for all before me. Quantity is there once 
for all before me full-summed in its two moments. It 
is but self-deception when I take the two moments after 
one another, now this explicit, that implicit, and again 
that explicit, this implicit. The spurious infinite is quite 
gratuitous then, the true infinite, the whole, is present 
and summed in the notion quantity. As regards the 
problems of Zeno in point, then, we oppose the concrete 
to the abstract. Quantity implies, we say, in its very 
notion (a notion duly deduced in place), discretion and 
continuity. In the ' Achilles,' while the continuity is 
presupposed or implicit, the discretion is alone exposed or 
explicit; hence the difficulty. The solution, then, is: 
we are not limited to any one moment, but may set 
quantity under either. Motion, unable to escape from 
quantity, readily traverses the quantum. Hegel, then, 
as we see, answers Zeno by showing that he was cor- 
rect, but one-sided ; while Mr. Mill, on the other hand, 
answers for his part by simply advancing the opposite 
one-sidedness : he does not, like Hegel, prince of thinkers 
as he was, bring the whole, and in its place. I may 
observe that it is not different with the general Eleatic 
problem before us. The whole Eleatic difficulty is the 
separation of the two inseparables, identity and differ- 
ence. Mr. Lewes is a great stickler for the principium 
identitatis, and believes, as Sir William Hamilton does, 
that Hegel confounds logic when he talks of identity and 
difference in the same breath. But it requires simply 
consideration to see that to explain m not to say, identity 
is identity, but difference is identity. 

Mr. Grote, while very luminously stating the Zenonic 
arguments, appears to me very unsatisfactory both as 
regards special points and the general position. It adds 
to the unsatisfactoriness, indeed, that, taken in detail, Mr. 
Grote's assertions are for the most part correct. Hegel 
states the general position thus : — 'That there is motion, 
that there is such a manifestation, — that is not the ques- 
tion. That there is motion is as sensuously certain as 
that there are elephants. In that sense it never occurred 
to Zeno to deny motion. (So far there is no difference in 
Mr. Grote ; but the unsatisfactory element is that he 



THE ELEATICS. SG7 

does not announce himself to the same effect as follows. ) 
The question rather is of the truth of motion, or motion, 
indeed, is to be held untrue (in Zeno's view, that is J, be- 
cause the notion of it involves a contradiction ; and by 
this he means to say that veritable being cannot be predi- 
cated of it.' If for motion here we read plurality, we 
shall understand clearly that the general object of Zenc 
was to retort on the opponents of the Eleatic unity, no 
less difficulties than those they objected to it. Mr. Grote 
— to notice a by -point — uses for the Being or the One the 
term Ens. Now, in the first place, does not this uncouth 
term mislead ? Does it not distort, or impregnate with 
a chimera, the quite homely thought of the Eleatics ? Is 
not, indeed, what I may call the humanity of the position 
quite lost in it ? This humanity is, as I say, the quite 
homely thought that this great universe must be a One, 
of which consequently only affirmation can be predicated, 
while negation must be denied. With this idea of a 
single life, of a single being before them, what is, they 
thought, cannot be this coming and this going that sense 
apprehends ; there must be that which is, in the midst of 
it all, and it alone is. Surely this very natural concep- 
tion does not naturally house in so strange a monster as 
Ens. Does it not transport us to the quiddities of the 
schoolmen rather, or to the ten sons and Ens their father 
in Milton ? But — returning — what Zeno says generally 
then is this: — The changeableness and plurality of the 
everyday world is supposed to contradict the conception 
of the universe as a single unchangeable being ; and I 
admit that both cannot be correct. Parmenides, however, 
has, for his part, established the reasonableness of the 
supposition of unity, and I will now, for my part, prove 
to you that these elements, change and plurality, involve 
contradictions, and are therefore incorrect, or untrue to 
reason. Now the main peculiarity of Mr. Grote is sug- 
gested here. The opponents of the Eleatics are repre- 
sented in the above to be those who, in Mr. Grote' s own 
phrase, regarded the hypothesis of Parmenides as * obvi- 
ously inconsistent with the movement and variety of the 
phenomenal world.' Now this inconsistency is certainly, 
somewhat perplexingly, an ingredient with Mr. Grote too, 
but still he holds the adversaries of Zeno to be ' advocates 
of absolute plurality and discontinuousness,' to be 'those 
who maintained the plurality of absolute substances, each 
for itself, with absolute attributes, apart from the fact of 



368 ANNOTATIONS. 

sense, and independent of any sensuous subject.' It 
must be said, however, that in this opinion Mr. Grote 
stands alone. Mr. Grote himself mentions Tennemann as 
disagreeing with him ; and of all the authorities, English 
or German, mentioned in these notes, not one supposes 
' the reasoning of Zeno' to have been otherwise directed 
than, as Tennemann holds, « against the world of sense.' 
The general conception of the Eleatic position in this 
reference is, in the words of Erdmann, that ' cognition of 
sense is deceptive ; ' and Mr. Grote seems to share it in 
regard to all the Eleatics, Zeno alone excepted. Nay, 
what was the meaning of the promenade of Diogenes, and 
was not he an opponent of Zeno? Surely he at least 
took Zeno to deny the truth of sensuous motion. It is 
with this view in his mind, however, that Mr. Grote 
says, in reference to the millet which, sonorous in the 
bushel, is insonorous in the grain, that Zeno is not rea- 
soning about 'facts of sense, phenomenal and relative, 
but about things in themselves, absolute and ultra- 
phenomenal realities.' Yet, again, is not this self -con- 
tradictory? What, then, is motion? And, in the 
immediate case, what is sound ? Can we suppose that 
Zeno, when he argued about motion, referred to some- 
thing ' absolute and ultra-phenomenal,' and not to what 
was only sensuously distinguishable ? Or that the sound 
he had in view was not the special one knowledge pecu- 
liar to the ear, but sound in itself, sound absolute and 
ultra-phenomenal ? The truth is that what Zeno wants 
to point out in reference to the millet, as everywhere 
else, is simply the contradiction which the fact of sense 
involves or seems to involve, or, as Erdmann says, that 
the senses cannot keep up with reason. So it was under- 
stood by Aristotle, whose answer to Zeno (in regard to 
vibrations, impressibility, etc.) is, on that understanding, 
as Mr. Grote himself admits, perfectly valid. Though 
one man cannot lift a ton, a hundred men may, and each 
man will lend his own impulse. As with these, then, so 
with the millet. One grain when it falls is not heard, a 
bushel is, but each grain of the bushel contributed its 
own share to the general vibration. Nor is the truth 
here, though in reference to a sensuous fact, relative, but 
absolute — absolute by the absoluteness of an analytic or 
identical proposition. If the fall of the thousand grains 
produced a certain vibration, it is absolutely certain that 
each grain was there for its own. It is this relativity, 



THE ELBA TICS. 369 

however, which Mr. Grote has alone in mind, and we 
shall take it up by itself as a whole presently. Here we 
see that the resolution on the part of Mr. Grote to find 
Zeno arguing for this relativity in the modern sense has 
led him not only to convert Zeno's opponents into abso- 
lutists, but to be very gratuitously unjust to Aristotle. 
Zeno's proof of contradiction in the facts of sense that 
related to the millet held good only so long as the con- 
tradiction was not explained ; Aristotle explained it ; but 
Mr. Grote rejects the explanation because, alone of all 
mankind, he believes Zeno not to have been reasoning 
against the world of sense. But hostility to the solutions 
of Aristotle is not, on the part of Mr. Grote, limited to 
the millet problem : it is repeated in the rest. P. 100, 
Mr. Grote says in a note, — ' These four arguments 
against absolute motion caused embarrassment to Aris- 
totle and his contemporaries ; ' but that is more than the 
sentence he quotes from Aristotle warrants. The predi- 
cate * absolute,' attached to ' motion,' is Mr. Grote's own, 
while the sentence itself gives no warrant whatever to 
the supposition that the * embarrassment' was not re- 
solved.* P. 103, Mr. Grote says: — 'But the purport of 
Zeno's reasoning is mistaken, when he is conceived as 
one who wishes to delude his hearers by proving both 
sides of a contradictory proposition. His contradictory 
conclusions are elicited with the express purpose of dis- 
proving the premisses from which they are derived. For 
these premisses Zeno himself is not to be held respon- 
sible, since he borrows them from his opponents : a cir- 
cumstance which Aristotle forgets, when he censures the 
Zenonian arguments as paralogisms, because they assume 
the Continua, Space and Time, to be discontinuous or 
divided into many distinct parts. Now this absolute 
discontinuousness of matter, space, and time was not ad- 
vanced by Zeno as a doctrine of his own, but is the very 
doctrine of his opponents, taken up by him for the pur- 
pose of showing that it led to contradictory consequences, 
and thus of indirectly refuting it. The sentence of Aris- 
totle is thus really in Zeno's favour, though apparently 
adverse to him.' Opposite this, in the margin, we have 
the words, ' Mistake of supposing Zeno's reductiones ad 
absurdum of an opponent's doctrine to be contradictions 
of data generalized from experience.' "We have here the 
gratuitous conversion of Zeno's opponents into absolutists, 
and unfairness to Aristotle clearly expressed. No one 

* Aristotle only says :— 'There are four arguments of Zeno's about 
Motion which bring difficulties to those resolving them (Avoixm').' 



370 ANNOTATIONS. 

attributes to Zeno any 'wish to delude his hearers by 
proving both sides of a contradictory proposition.' The 
sensuous phenomenon was simply generally supposed to 
contradict the Eleatic noumenon, and Zeno merely sought 
to show in defence that it contradicted itself. Properly, 
then, his ' conclusions ' are not elicited for ' disproving ' 
any * premisses,' but to demonstrate incongruities in the 
sensuous facts objected to him. Zeno, certainly, is not 
to be held responsible for the facts of sense which were 
the only premises he borrowed from his opponents ; but 
quite as certainly Aristotle forgot nothing when he ob- 
jected to Zeno that he assumed space and time to be 
infinitely divided ; for that was the very thing that Zeno 
did assume. In very truth 'the absolute discontinu- 
ousness of matter, space, and time,' was ' advanced by 
Zeno as a doctrine of his own,' and it precisely was not 
* a doctrine of his opponents.' At least, unless Mr. Grote 
can disprove it, the historical fact is, that Zeno is the 
first who signalized what is called the ' infinite divisi- 
bility,' and he was led to it in the search of arguments 
that would throw doubt on the sensuous change and the 
sensuous plurality of the world of sense. The infinite 
divisibility was his property then, and not that of his 
opponents ; that of his opponents, on the contrary, was 
the finite divisibility, the simple motion of sense. But 
what are we to understand as Mr. Grote's own belief in 
regard to the infinite divisibility? Are we to suppose 
him to believe, as he seems to say, that leading to con- 
tradictory consequences it indirectly refutes itself? A 
few years ago there was no dearer toy in the hands of 
the Aufklarung than the mathematical proof of infinite 
divisibility; are we to suppose that the adherents of 
that movement have authoritatively issued their de par le 
roi that the infinite divisibility is now refuted and aban- 
doned ? I fear there will be a good many grumblers in 
camp, for the mathematical proof is still there, however 
much 'relativity' would seek to ignore all proof what- 
ever, even perhaps its own. This is a point on which the 
Aufklarung will find itself obliged to make up its mind, 
and in so doing it will be led into the realms of truth at 
last. What Zeno wished to reduce to absurdity, then, 
was the fact of motion as 'generalized from experience,' 
and not the infinite divisibility as doctrine of his oppon- 
ents. Nay, this doctrine was expressly his, and it was 
expressly opposed to the generalization from experience. 



HZHACLITCS. 371 

Aristotle's sentence, then, was really adverse to Zeno, 
and not even apparently in his favour. Aristotle, in 
truth, has very fairly met the general argumentation of 
Zeno. De Quincey and Sir William Hamilton, excellent 
Germans, excellent Grecians, both failed to see this in 
Aristotle, but it escaped not the iron tenacity of Hegel, 
whom, as we have seen, Mr. Lewes shows good sense in 
following. 

Before concluding this note, I may observe that in 
Bayle's argument against Aristotle's Zenonic solution 
l$ee Hegel, Gesch, d. Phil L p. 291), there is a circum- 
stance that does not come readily to the surface. Bayle 
attributes to motion the power of actual infinite divi- 
sion : • Car le mouvement est une chose, qui a h. meme 
vertu que la division ; il touche une partie de Tespace 
sans toucher T autre, et il touche toutes les unes apres les 
autres : n'est-ce pas les distinguer aetuellement ?' At 
first sight this is quite as puzzling as the proof of the geo- 
metrician ; solution is impossible indeed to any position 
but that of Hegel The very language of Bayle. indeed, 
names a miracle : Unite motion is capable of infinite 
h. in unite division '. 



OF terms here, perhaps the only one that requires a 
word is becoming. ' This is the only word in our lan- 
guage.' says Ferrier, •' which corresponds to the ^L^voj.evcv 
:■:- ■);'*)* -:-?z.) of the Greeks, but it is an unfortunate word 
in being both inexpressive and ambiguous. It often 
stands for the proper, the decent. Of course that is not 
the sense in which it is here used. It is used in some sort 
of antithetical relation to Being, a relation which we 
must endeavour to determine. For in these two words. 
:--. and -. .-■: £-.--.. :*-' and vv i.;f;c;\ centres the most car- 
imal distinction in the Greek philosophy, a distiu:: 

iir.z in some decree to our substantial and 



For 460, 500 B.C. is proba '.he date 

when Her unshed mot was born, as Mr. Lewes 

Mr. Lewes is 
nal, but not enviably so. in representing Hera: lit us t ) 
regard * the senses as the scare-.? ol all true knowh 
.. on unive:- :v. would seem to be I 



372 ANNOTATIONS. 

pletely the reverse. Mr. Ferrier corrects Mr. Lewes's 
statement on this point, and gives otherwise a very suc- 
cessful account of the philosophy of Heraclitus. Zeller 
says, that ' the stories told by Diogenes of the misanthropy 
of Heraclitus are worthless, to say nothing of the salt-less 
phrase, that while Democritus laughed at all, Heraclitus 
wept at all.' The schoolboy conceit of the deep Heraclitus 
and the universal Democritus being the one the crying and 
the other the laughing philosopher, is surely picturesque 
to nobody now ; surely it is (as Zeller says) uncommonly 
' salt-less.' Mr. Grote gives a very full, accurate, and, as 
usual, felicitous summary of all that is known as regards 
the doctrines of Heraclitus ; but he seems, on the whole, 
to remain, as it were, outside in his case, and to refuse to 
accept his lesson (as regards universal reason) in the way 
it is accepted by the most and the best. Hegel ascribes 
to Cicero the attribution to Heraclitus of intentional ob- 
scurity ('Cicero, Nat. Deor. i. 26, etc., has a mauvaise id4e, 
as is often the case with him, etc.') ; and Mr. Grote says 
something similar to this ; but the attribution is not 
restricted to Cicero ; it is to be found at least repeated in 
Diogenes Laertius. 



VIII. — Empedocles. 

COMPARISON with the other historians will demon- 
strate the excellent taste and judgment of Schweg- 
ler in this section. About the place of Empedocles, his 
value, the position of his philosophy, etc., there are many 
disputes, and we have little but these to read anywhere 
else under his name. But Schwegler avoids all that, and 
assigns quietly what is at once reasonable and correct. 
Hegel, though following the usual order in his lectures, 
was in the habit of characterizing Empedocles as the pre- 
cursor of Anaxagoras ; his reason being that there was 
in Empedocles a certain ' stammer/ as Aristotle said, of 
the idea of design. Michelet, then, in editing Hegel's 
History of Philosophy , actually places Empedocles im* 
mediately before Anaxagoras, assigning (ingeniously) as 
additional reason that Empedocles, vacillating between 
the one of Heraclitus and the many of Leucippus and 
adopting both as his presuppositions, constitutes in this 
very vacillation and adoption the transition to the causal 
unity of Anaxagoras. Hegel is very short on Empedocles, 



EMPEDOCLES.— THE ATOMISTS. 373 

but he is led to use several phrases that throw welcome 
light on his own views. Erdmann finds in Empedocle3 
a synthesis of all the philosophers that preceded him 
from Thales to Heraclitus without exclusion of a single 
link. Mr. Grote does Empedocles full justice. Mr. 
Lewes has once again a position of unenviable singularity 
here ; placing Empedocles even after Anaxagoras. But 
surely Hegel's understanding of Aristotle, both as regards 
the time when Anaxagoras wrote, and the mere approach 
on the part of Empedocles to the great conception of 
design, cannot well be resisted. Zeller too (i. p. 707), 
accepts the interpretation of Hegel, and gives (i. 558, 4) 
reasons for the position usually assigned to Empedocles 
which one can hardly refuse. In truth Zeller and Hegel, 
and in connexion with Aristotle and Plato, are quite irre- 
sistible. Erdmann, too, supports the same view, as also — 
a name we may mention to Mr. Lewes — Thomas Taylor. 
One recurs again with satisfaction to the simplicity, yet 
competent fulness, of Schwegler. 



IX. The Atomists. 

MR. LEWES holds Hegel to regard Democritus * a3 
the successor of Heraclitus, and the predecessor 
of Anaxagoras. ' This, however, is not more correct than 
a preceding allegation, that the same Hegel held Empe- 
docles to be ■ the precursor of the Atomists.' The state- 
ments are self -discrepant, and if correct, would rest only 
on the formality of external arrangement. Hegel directly 
names Empedocles ■ a Pythagorean Italic that inclined to 
the Ionics,' and, as we have seen, he preferred to con- 
sider his doctrines directly before those of Anaxagoras. 
Then whatever external place be assigned to Leucippus 
and Democritus, Hegel says of these that, ■ in continuing 
the Eleatic school, they incline to the Italics.' Mr. 
Lewes differs in a more important respect from Hegel's 
view of Atomism, when he seems to regard it, as he did 
that of Heraclitus, as a sensational system. ' Ideality of 
sense,' Hegel calls the main feature in Atomism : the 
' atom and the nothing ' appear to him * ideal principles/ 
and surely with reason. It is a harder saying of Hegel 
when he describes Atomism as ■ showing universal 
quality or transition to the universal ; ' but this is a 
deeply meaning characterisation of the fact that the 



374 ANNO TA TIONS. 

Atomistic principle was a universal with transition to the 
particular, or that the universal atom was adequate to 
explain all particular manifestations. Hegel asserts, in 
opposition to Tennemann who represents atomism to be 
'recognition of the empirical world as the only objec- 
tively real world, ' that ' the atom and the void are not 
empirical things : Leucippus says, it is not by the senses 
that we know the true ; and thereby he originated an 
idealism in the higher sense, not a merely subjective one.' 
The difference of Hegel from all the others is that he not 
only reports, but thinks what he reports ; and thus his 
history has a value to which that of all the others is in- 
significant. Space fails here, however, for any further 
exemplification of his strangely meaning writing, of which 
the section before us is full. 

Mr. Lewes says, — 'The Atomism of Democritus has 
not been sufficiently appreciated as a speculation. Leib- 
nitz, many centuries afterwards, was led to a doctrine 
essentially similar ; his celebrated " Monadologie" is but 
Atomism with a new terminology.' Section xxxiii. will 
show to the reader how very groundless this statement 
essentially is. Again : ' JSTot only did these thinkers 
concur in their doctrine of atomism, but also, as we have 
seen, in their doctrine of the origin of knowledge : a co- 
incidence which gives weight to the supposition that in 
both minds one doctrine was dependent on the other.' 
Mr. Lewes ascribes to the Atomists a quite Lockian 
theory of knowledge : are we to suppose then that Leib- 
nitz also participated in such a theory ? 

Mr. Grote's statement of the Atomists is faithful, full, 
and well-arranged. Modern relativity, however, is the 
only philosophical position of which he still indicates ap- 
probation. Hegel attributes it as 'a great merit ' to 
Leucippus that he ( distinguished between the universal 
and the sensible, the primary and the secondary, the 
essential and the inessential qualities.' Mr. Grote is 
of another way of thinking : ' Theophrastus,' he says, 
' denies this distinction altogether : and denies it with 
the best reason : not many of his criticisms on Democri- 
tus are so just and pertinent as this one. ' A distinction 
entertained by such thinkers as Kant and Hegel is not to 
be so summarily dismissed, though plainly the absolute- 
ness of the primary qualities will not suit the taste of a 
Relativist. 



ANAXAGORAS. 375 



X. — Anaxagoras. 

FROM the axiom that only ' like can act upon like,' 
Anaxagoras, we are told by Mr. Lewes (i. p. 101), 
formed his homceomerkz. This is difficult to reconcile 
with Mr. Grote's statement from Theophrastus that Anaxa- 
goras explained sensation by the action of unlike upon 
unlike. This latter, indeed, and not the former, has been 
universally regarded as his special principle — (see Zeller 
vol. i. p. 699). Surely, too, Mr. Lewes is very unhappy in 
assuming Aristotle to have regarded the system of Anaxa- 
goras as inferior to that of Empedocles. Aristotle (see 
Zeller, vol. i. 558, 4) almost uniformly depreciated Empe- 
docles, while everybody knows that Anaxagoras, in com- 
parison with the rest, struck him as a sober man among 
random babblers. Socrates, too, similarly expresses 
himself in the Phcedo, and by all the latest and best 
German authorities Anaxagoras is represented as the 
initiator of that transference of the problem from matter 
to mind which directly introduced the subjective theories 
of the Sophists, and the objective philosophies of Socrates, 
Plato, and Aristotle. Mr. Lewes protests against the 
application by Hegel of such a name as eclectic to Anaxa- 
goras. Hegel, as with such reality and depth of know- 
ledge was alone possible to him, places and characterizes 
Anaxagoras as I have indicated. In fact, if he saw 
'land' in Heraclitus, in Anaxagoras he sees 'light ;' and 
he assigns to the latter an influence at once original and 
supereminent. It is possible, for all that, that he may 
have used the word eclectic in reference to Anaxagoras, 
but, if so, I know not where. Mr. Lewes attributes to 
Anaxagoras the distinction that c the senses perceive 
phenomena, but do not and cannot observe noumena,' and 
this distinction he calls ' an anticipation of the greatest 
discovery of psychology, though seen dimly and confus- 
edly by Anaxagoras.' Are we to understand, then, that 
the greatest discovery of psycholgy is, that the senses 
cannot find quality in the unqualified, taste in the taste- 
less, sound in the soundless, colour in the colourless, etc. ? 
Is it so certain that dimness to such an insight would be 
inferiority ? 

Many other points one might discuss with Mr. Lewes, 
but for the sake of space they must be omitted. We 
may remark, however, that at page 79 he seems to agree 



376 ANNOTATIONS. 

■with Mr. Grote's low estimate of the Nous, while at page 
83 he quotes Simplicius in such a manner as to restore 
that principle to all its pristine dignity. To Mr. Grote's 
estimate alluded to we now pass. There is nothing in the 
fragments of Anaxagoras now remaining, Mr. Grote says, 
to justify the belief that the author himself proposed 
the Nous ' (according to Aristotle's expression) as the 
cause of all that was good in the world, assigning other 
agencies as the causes of all evil (Mr. Grote's reference 
is Aristotle's well-known locus that characterizes Anaxa- 
goras as a sober man among babblers, because he had 
seen that neither material principles nor a mere moving 
force could account for the beauty and adaptation of the 
course and structure of the universe, and had accordingly 
proposed in room of these a thinking being, an intelli- 
gence ; as for Anaxagoras "assigning other agencies," etc., I 
can see no hint of this in Aristotle, who, indeed (Metaph. 
xii. 10), actually blames Anaxagoras for not having made 
a contrary to the good, etc. Mr. Grote proceeds :) It is 
not characterized by him as a person — not so much as 
the Love and Enmity of Empedocles. It is not one but 
multitudinous, and all its separate manifestations are 
alike, differing only as greater or less. It is in fact 
identical with the soul, the vital principle or vitality, 
belonging not only to all men and animals, but to all 
plants also. It is one substance, or form of matter 
among the rest, but thinner than all of them (thinner 
than even fire or air), and distinguished by the peculiar 
characteristic of being absolutely unmixed. It has mov- 
ing power and knowledge, like the Air of Diogenes the 
Apofloniate : it initiates movement, and it knows about 
all the things which either pass into or pass out of com- 
bination. It disposes or puts in order all things that 
were, are, or will be ; but it effects this only by acting 
as a fermenting principle. , . . Anaxagoras appears to 
conceive his Nous as one among numerous other real 
agents in Nature, material like the rest, yet differing 
from the rest. . . • (He agrees with Zeller) that the 
Anaxagorean Nous is not conceived as having either im- 
materiality or personality.' This, then, evidently is a 
very low estimate of the Nous. Despite the express 
cause assigned by Aristotle for his selecting of Anaxa- 
goras, the principle of this Anaxagoras shall be but a 
material one among the rest ! How differently Anaxa- 
goras himself seems to speak ! Nous to him is infinite, 



ANAXAGORAS. 377 

absolute, mixed with nothing, alone by itself, the purest 
and subtlest of all things ; it is omniscient and omni- 
potent ; it is dominant especially in what has soul, 
whether greater or less ; it has disposed all things 
into a world ; nothing is separated from another but 
Nous ; all Nous is similar, both the greater and the less ; 
but no other thing is similar to another. That is how 
Anaxagoras himself expresses himself. Then surely it 
is quite evident from what Socrates says in the Phcedo 
that the understanding of the countrymen of Anaxa- 
goras was that his principle was a designing mind. 
Nor does Aristotle dissent from this, but, on the con- 
trary, he confirms it by a hundred expressions. The 
voice of antiquity in general, indeed, is wholly to the 
same effect. So with the moderns — so with Hegel in 
particular, who in Anaxagoras sees ■ light ' at last, and 
the immediate transition to the subjective thought of Pro- 
tagoras and the objective thought of Socrates. Mr. Grote 
stands alone — alone against the world — unsupported, 
as we shall presently see, even by Zeller. But a theo- 
logical principle re-appearing in Anaxagoras after so many 
philosophers, and even in the almost scientific age of 
Diogenes and Democritus, would not have been to the 
mind of Auguste Comte, and so neither is it to the 
mind of Mr. Grote. Theology, Metaphysics, Illumination, 
that is the course of things in which Mr. Grote believes 
in general, and that is the course of things which Mr. 
Grote would see in Greece. Socrates is the most en- 
lightened of Greeks, and to him the transition must be 
influences of information only, not Anaxagoras with his 
disturbing Nous, but Diogenes, Democritus, Zeno, and 
Gorgias the Leontine. Surely, however, no one can 
honestly weigh even the very erudition of the notes of 
the Germans — say of Zeller alone — and entertain any 
doubt as to what the nature of his belief should be. It 
is unnecessary to follow Mr. Grote into all the particulars 
of what I hold to be his general distortion of the principle 
of Anaxagoras. With one or two of the main props the 
whole fabric falls. Any one reading Mr. Grote alone 
would go away with the belief that Zeller denied the 
immateriality and the personality of the Nous ; but this 
would— really — be a mistake, and I do not believe any 
one would be more discontented with it than Zeller him- 
self. Yet Zeller uses the words — in such a context, how- 
ever, as converts them into something very different from 



378 ANNOTATIONS. 

what they seem in the note of Mr. Grote. Zeller's de- 
scription of the Nous is to this effect : — ' It (vol. i. p. 679) 
is a thinking being, a spirit, the ordering and moving 
force that from the homoeomeric materials creates the 
world. The Anaxagorean fragments do not in any- 
general manner declare the reasons of this assumption, 
but these are implied in the qualities which distinguish 
the Nous from the materials. These qualities are three, 
unity, power, and knowledge. The Nous is alone, un- 
mixed with anything, separate from all, for only in free- 
dom from any foreign element can it have power over all. 
It is of all things the finest and purest. . . . Absolute 
power over matter, further, belongs to the Nous, from 
which proceeds all movement of matter. Unlimited 
knowledge finally it must possess, for only so will it be 
able to order all for the best. The Nous, consequently, 
must be simple, as otherwise it could not be omnipotent 
and omniscient, and it must be these to be the fashioner 
of the world ; the fundamental feature of the doctrine of 
the Nous, and the one to which the ancients give the 
greatest prominence, lies in the notion of the world- 
forming power. We must assume therefore that this is 
essentially the point from which Auaxagoras was led to 
his doctrine. He was unable to explain motion from 
mere matter, and still less the motion under law of the 
beautiful and designful universe, nor would he appeal to 
unintelligible necessity or to chance, and so he assumed 
an incorporeal being, the source of movement and arrange- 
ment. ' Zeller further admits Anaxagoras to have had in 
mind the analogy of the human intelligence, and so far to 
have conceived his Nous as in some sort personal (fur- 
sichseiendes, erJcennendes Wesen) ; but he does not believe 
at the same time Anaxagoras to have possessed quite 
pure conceptions either of the immateriality or of the 
personality of the Nous. There can be no doubt that 
Anaxagoras had immateriality in his eye despite the de- 
fects which he (Zeller) signalizes. These defects are that 
the Nous is described imperfectly in general, and in par- 
ticular as only a finer matter, and participant of the 
extension of things. But in a note Zeller tells us that 
these objections are founded partly on 'the words the 
finest of all things, partly and particularly on what is 
said of the existence of the Nous in things.' Now, neither 
objection has any weight. People believe now-a-days 
that the soul is immaterial, and yet many, so believing, 



AN AX A GORAS. 379 

would not hesitate to talk of it as the finest or subtlest 
thing of all. Why, the word here for finest is literally 
the most free from husk, a metaphor surely very much 
in place in reference to what was incorporeal. As for 
the presence of the Nous in things in such manner that 
these might appear to possess parts of it, and that * greater 
or less Nous ' might be spoken of in their reference, a 
precisely similar mode of speech might legitimately be 
used by any modern Theist. God is, and God is reason, 
and all things, equally participant in reason, do in a cer- 
tain sort at the same time exhibit it unequally. Against 
the personality of the Nous, Zeller brings forward no 
other objections. In fact the whole negative of Zeller is 
merely the charge of imperfection, and, only supported 
as it is, must be pronounced a very small one. A similar 
negative he indicates as possible in the case of Aristotle, 
and yet he urges it not, but refers to this very possibility 
as pleading for Anaxagoras. Nay, as regards the passage 
quoted by Mr. Grote, Zeller says in the note that he has 
not the smallest reason for denying a theistic element in 
the doctrine of Anaxagoras, and it is incorrect that he has 
denied it : ' this only I have maintained, and maintain, 
that the breach between spirit and nature was begun but 
not completed by Anaxagoras, that the Nous was not 
conceived as a subject actually independent of nature, 
but, if on one side as incorporeal and intelligent, still on 
another side as an element distributed to the individual 
beings, and operative in the manner of a natural power/ 
Apart from the slightness of Zeller's own supporting 
grounds, and apart from all that can be urged for the 
purely intellectual character of the Nous from Plato, 
Aristotle, and elsewhere, it is evident that we might still 
accept Zeller's general conclusion without being untrue 
to the universal conviction on the subject. In short, 
Zeller's position will now be understood, as well as the 
impossibility of his sympathizing in the smallest degree 
with the general description of Mr. Grote in reference to 
a Nous that is not so personal as the Empedoclean Love 
and Hate, that is a matter among the rest, that has only 
knowledge, etc., as the Air of Diogenes, that acts only as 
a fermenting principle, that simply ■ stirs up ' rotatory 
motion, that is one among numerous other real agents, 
etc. Neither do I think that Zeller would judge other- 
wise than Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel judged of Anaxa- 
goras' ' application ' of his principle, that it was one, 



380 ANNOTATIONS. 

namely, that went pretty much 'into the air.' But 
though he could not apply it, Auaxagoras certainly pro- 
posed the principle, and it was a universal and prepon- 
derating principle, and no mere equal among many equals, 
in the application of all of which Anaxagoras was quite 
' consistent ' according to Mr. Grote, and quite free from 
the known charges of Plato and Aristotle, to an opposite 
effect. The conclusion of the whole matter is that of 
Schwegler, that the Nous was an immaterial principle, 
but still physically conditioned. 



XL.— The 

THE attention of the reader is particularly solicited to 
this section, and to the transition to Socrates ; for 
it is here that we begin to get a clear view of the lesson 
of philosophy — the distinction, namely, between subjec- 
tivity and objectivity, and our consequent duty. 

There are many passages in Schwegler which leave us 
without difficulty as to how the subjective side is to be 
understood. In section xxiii., for example, he speaks 
thus : — ' The feeling that philosophy must be emanci- 
pated from its previous state of pupilage and servitude 
strengthened ; a struggle towards greater independency 
of research awoke ; and though none durst turn as yet 
against the church itself, attempts were made,' etc. . . . 
' It originated in a scientific interest, and awoke conse- 
quently the spirit of free inquiry and a love of know- 
ledge ; it converted objects of faith into objects of 
thought ; raised men from the sphere of unconditional 
belief into the sphere of doubt, of search, of understand- 
ing.' . . . ' Another principle was thus brought into the 
world, the authority of reason, the principle of intellect,' 
. . . 'the spirit of inquiry, the longing for light, the 
advancing intelligence of the time,' . . . ' the longing on 
the part of consciousness for autonomy, for freedom from 
the fetters of authority,' . . . ' a rupture of thought with 
authority, a protest against the shackles of the positive, a 
return of consciousness from its self -alienation into self,' 
. . . ' nature and the moral laws of nature, humanity as 
such, one's own heart, one's own conscience, subjective 
conviction, in short, the rights of the subject began at 
last to assume some value.' . . . ' Scientific inquiry not only 
destroyed a variety of transmitted errors and prejudices, 



THE SOPHISTS. 351 

but, what was highly important, it turned the thoughts 
and attention of men to the mundane, to the actual ; fos- 
tering and encouraging the habit of reflection, the feeling 
of self-dependence, the awakened spirit of scrutiny and 
doubt : the position of a science of observation and ex- 
periment presupposes an independent self-consciousness 
on the part of the individual, a wresting of himself loose 
from authority and the creed of authority, — in a word, it 
presupposes scepticism : hence the originators of modem 
philosophy, Bacon and Descartes, began with scepticism,' 
In reading these phrases, would not every one fancy that 
it was Mr. Buckle wrote them, and not Schwegler ? 
They strike, indeed, the very key-note of the central 
thought of Buckle, and, from end to end, I know not 
that there is anything else to be found in Buckle. That 
1 awakened spirit of scrutiny and doubt ' is the very 
voice of him. It is not a voice restricted to Mr. Buckle, 
however, but belongs to Mr. Grote as well What it insists 
on, then, is wholly the 'rights of the subject.' These 
rights the reader will probably perfectly understand from 
the quotations made for him : he will do well, however, 
to read the whole section, as well as those on Socrates, 
Plato, the French Ulumination, the German Illumination, 
and probably others that may of themselves occur to him. 
Generally as regards the Sophists, I presume I may hold 
it as established fact that Mr. Grote's vindication of them 
founds on their 'advanced thinking,' and particularly 
on their supposed defence of the rights of the subject. 
It was Hegel who began this vindication of the Sophists, 
and Mr. Grote's reason was Hegel's reason. Hegel has 
been followed in this by every German historian of 
weight who has written after him. Brandis and Bitter, 
it is true, take a somewhat darker view of the indivi- 
duals concerned, but Zeller. Schwegler, Erdinann. etc, 
all literally follow Hegel. Mr. Grote, then, is evidently 
right so far. But this so far is only one half. Defence 
of the rights of the subject, this is one half of the action 
of the Sophists, and in this they are defensible, justifiable, 
laudable. Denial of the rights of the object, again, this 
is the other half of the action of the Sophists, and in that 
they are indefensible, unjustifiable, and positively censur- 
able. Now Hegel and the rest see this latter half quite 
as clearly, and fail not to make it quite as prominent 
as the other one. Nay, the English historians to whom 
we are in the habit of referring in these notes, have, 



382 ANNOTATIONS. 

one and all of them, though only perhaps more 01 less 
imperfectly, given name to this same half, — one and all 
of them, except Mr. Grote. Mr. Grote alone accentuates 
the rights of the subject and a warranted relativity: Mr. 
Grote alone forgets, knows not, or names not, the rights 
of the object and a warranted irrelativity. But surely 
in these days, when M. Comte himself, with the appro- 
bation of Mr. Mill and Mr. Lewes, insists on the one sole 
duty of affirmation and construction, it is out of place 
aDd an anachronism, for Mr. Grote to insist only on the 
duty of the negative, on the Aufkldrung, pure and simple, 
as it existed a hundred years ago, and as — with only a 
change for the weaker and the worse — it has been revived 
by Mr. Buckle. Surely it is time to leave these unhappy 
Priests alone ; surely, in these days of agitation against 
Decalogues and Confessions of Faith, the sin of the Priests 
is no longer that of unpliancy to the Auf klarung ! But, 
as is evident, space for discussion fails, and it must suffice 
to oppose to Schwegler's expression of the rights of the sub- 
ject, the same authority's expression of the rights of the 
object. We can only select, indeed, a few phrases from 
the section on the Sophists as follows : — ' The Sophists 
introduced, in the form of a general religious and political 
Aufklarung (illumination) the principle of subjectivity, 
though at first only negatively, or as destroyer of all that 
was established in the opinions of existing society ; and 
this continued till Socrates opposed to this principle of 
empirical subjectivity that of absolute subjectivity, or 
intelligence in the form of a free moral will, and asserted, 
as against the world of sense, thought to be the positively 
higher principle, and the truth of all reality.' . . . ' The 
right of the Sophists is the right of subjectivity, of self- 
consciousness (that is to say, the demand that all that is 
to be acknowledged by me shall establish itself as reason- 
able to my consciousness) ; its unright is the regarding of 
this subjectivity as only finite, empirical, egoistic subjec- 
tivity (that is to say, the demand that my contingent 
will and personal opinion shall have the decision of what is 
reasonable) ; its right is to have established the principle of 
free-will, of self -conviction ; its unright is to have set upon 
the throne the contingent will and judgment of the indi- 
vidual. ' ... 'To win a veritable world of objective thought, 
an absolute import, to set in the place of empirical subjec- 
tivity, absolute or ideal subjectivity, objective will, and 
rational thought, — this now was the task which Socrates 



THE SOPHISTS. 383 

undertook and achieved.' For conviction it would be 
necessary to quote the whole passage (pp. 37, 38), but these 
phrases will sti5ike the key-note, and induce the reader 
to inquire further for himself into what is meant by 
4 objective thought/ * universality, universal validity, in a 
word, objectivity.' What Hegel writes in this connexion 
is the original of all this, of all that concerns the Sophists 
under both aspects, and it is something singularly deep- 
working, exhaustive, and true. Gladly would we trans- 
late, gladly would we follow up with quotations from 
Erdmann and Zeller, but space forbids, and we must be 
content with reference. Mr. Grote leaves us in no doubt 
as to his position here, even without consideration of his 
express chapter on the Sophists in his History of Greece. 
In a note to his Plato (vol. ii. p. 361) we read as follows : — 
* This is the objection (Subjectivism) taken by Schwegler, 
Prantl, and other German thinkers, against the Pro- 
tagorean doctrine. . . . These authors both say that the 
Protagorean canon, properly understood, is right, but 
that Protagoras laid it down wrongly. They admit the 
principle of Subjectivity as an essential aspect of the case 
in regard to truth; but they say that Protagoras was 
wrong in appealing to individual, empirical, accidental 
subjectivity of each man at every varying moment, 
whereas he ought to have appealed to an ideal or uni- 
versal subjectivity. "What ought to be held true, 
right, good, etc." (says Schwegler), " must be decided 
doubtless by me, but by me so far forth as a rational 
and thinking being. Now, my thinking, my reason, is 
not something specially belonging to me, but something 
common to all rational beings, something universal ; so 
far therefore as I proceed as a rational and thinking 
person, my subjectivity is an universal subjectivity. 
Every thinking person has the consciousness that what 
he regards as right, duty, good, evil, etc., presents itself 
not merely to him as such, but also to every rational 
person, and that, consequently, his judgment possesses 
the character of universality, universal validity ; in one 
word, Objectivity." Here it is explicitly asserted that, 
wherever a number of individual men employ their 
reason, the specialties of each disappear, and they arrive 
at the same conclusions — Reason being a guide imper- 
sonal as well as infallible. And this same view is ex- 
pressed by Prantl in other language, when he reforms 
the Protagorean doctrine by saying, "Das Denken ist der 



384 ANNOTATIONS. 

Mass der Dinge." To me this assertion appears so dis- 
tinctly at variance with notorious facts, that I am sur- 
prised when I find it advanced by learned historians of 
philosophy, who recount the very facts which contradict 
it. Can it really be necessary to repeat that the reason 
of one man differs most materially from that of another 
— and the reason of the same person from itself, at dif- 
ferent times — in respect of the arguments accepted, the 
authorities obeyed, the conclusions embraced ? The 
impersonal Reason is a mere fiction ; the universal Rea- 
son is an abstraction, belonging alike to all particular rea- 
soners, consentient or dissentient, sound or unsound, etc. 
Schwegler admits the Protagorean canon only under a 
reserve which nullifies its meaning. To say that the 
Universal Reason is the measure of truth is to assign no 
measure at all. The Universal Reason can only make 
itself known through an interpreter. The interpreters 
are dissentient ; and which of them is to hold the privi- 
lege of infallibility ? Neither Schwegler nor Prantl is 
forward to specify who the interpreter is who is entitled 
to put dissentients to silence ; both of them keep in the 
safe obscurity of an abstraction — " Das Denken " — the 
Universal Reason. Protagoras recognises in each dissen- 
tient an equal right to exercise his own reason, and to 
judge for himself. In order to show how thoroughly 
incorrect the language of Schwegler and Prantl is, when 
they talk about the Universal Reason as unanimous and 
unerring, I transcribe from another eminent historian of 
philosophy a description of what philosophy has been 
(" Une multitude d'hypotheses . . . une diversity d'opin- 
ions . . . des sectes, des partis meme, des disputes inter- 
minables, des speculations steriles, des erreurs," etc. etc.), 
from ancient times down to the present.' 

We shall not in detail criticise these deliverances (in 
which Schwegler 7 s reader will of himself perceive errors 
as regards Protagoras, italics, etc.) ; but a word will prove 
useful on the question at stake. The terms subjective 
and objective have acquired now so many shades of 
meaning that they often perplex. The universal English 
sense as yet is, That that is subjective which belongs to 
a cognizing subject, and that objective which belongs to 
a cognized object. The cognized object, again, if itself 
mental, is subjectivo-objective ; if not mental, but (at 
least relatively) material, it is objectivo -objective. These 
are not the important German senses, however, and they 



THE SOPHISTS. 335 

are not those of the citation from Schwegler. Subjec- 
tivity, as there used, is what is mine, and mine only ; it 
is not yours, it is not his ; it is mine, and distinctive of 
me. Objectivity, again, as used in the same citation, is 
neither mine, nor yours, nor his, and yet mine, and 
yours, and his ; it is not proper and peculiar to any single 
one of us in his own separate and individual personality 
or originality — it is common to us all in our uni- 
versal humanity. In short, the one is accident 
the other differentia generis. The element of subjec- 
tivity, now, being restricted to A as A, to B as B, etc., 
can only exist as subjectivities, a chaos of miscellanies, 
of individual units, of infinite differences. These differ- 
ences must remain for ever different, disjunct, isolated, 
beside one another ; for they have nothing in common. 
It is otherwise with the element of objectivity. While 
subjectivities are insusceptible of comparison, objectivity 
may be compared with objectivity, and so at length a 
system formed in which we all meet. What is subjective, 
then, as incapable of comparison and eo "", is, 

for humanity as humanity, valueless ; while objectivity, 
on the contrary, as capable of both, is. in that respect, 
alone valuable, and invaluable. Subjective truth, then, 
is truth for this subject, or that subject. Objective truth 
is truth for this subject and that subject. Evidently, 
then, objective truth is independent of the subject as 
subject. The object is his filling, his contents ; it is 
truly he. He, apart from that object, is empty, nothing ; 
but still it is independent of him. He rather is depen- 
dent on it. As a subject his only right with reference to 
the object, is that he should find it his. that it should 
be brought home to his subjective conviction. That is 
the only truth or right of the principle of subjectivity. 
The truth or right of the principle of objectivity again 
is an absolute truth or right : it is binding on every 
subject — on every subject whose right of sul 
has been adequately respected. For these ideas it is im- 
possible to nod better expression than that of Schwegler 
(xi. 6), as referred to by Mr. Grote. Now, on the prac- 
tical side, this is the best outcome of Kant and Hegel ; 
this is the outcome of German philosophy ; all else there ia 
but its application. When we consider that it is this that 
is in question in the citation from Schwegler, is not the 
naive astonishment of Mr, Grote at such a doctrine posi- 
tively amusing ? Relativity, according to Mr. Grote, ini- 

2 B 



S86 ANNOTATIONS. 

parts, in view of their equal right, universal benignancy 
towards all opinions. Here, however, Mr. Grote's feelings 
are too much for him. He is forced to declare his ' surprise ' 
at an assertion ' so distinctly at variance with notorious 
facts ; ■ and he cannot help exclaiming, with the air of a 
shocked, stunned, but still authoritative preceptor, ■ Can 
it really be necessary to repeat V What Mr. Grote 
repeats is, that * the reason of one man differs most 
materially from that of another ;' but have not the 
Germans an equal right to exclaim to Mr. Grote, ' Can it 
really be necessary to repeat that the reason of one man 
dots not differ most materially from that of another, but, 
on the contrary, the reason of one man is essentially 
identical with that of another V It is due to Mr. Grote, 
however, to examine his position, as contained in the 
overlying text on the Thesetetus more at large. 

From this we soon learn that Mr. Grote's general 
philosophical creed is that which has been named of 
Relativity. One's first difficulty is what is meant by the 
term. Relativists in England are now-a-days spoken of 
with awe. They have inscribed on the universe the 
great principle of relativity, we hear. When we ask 
what this great principle is, however, we are referred to 
the appearance of the skin under a microscope, or to the 
variety of existent and non-existent opinions, perhaps — in 
fact, we are left at last with the word Relativity, and an 
empirical example or two. We should like to know 
what relativity is, where it begins, how it works itself 
out, where it ends, etc., but no one can show us that — 
no one thinks of showing us that. This, however, ought 
not to be so difficult — Hegel's system is that. An Abso- 
lute is impossible without — is only through and for, a 
Relative. The Absolute, then, will be the Relativity — 
or the System of all existent relativities or relations. 
Instead of giving us this complete relativity — relativity 
as it is and works — the bones and skeleton of a universe 
— Mr. Grote gives us this bare phrase only, The implica- 
tion of Subject and Object. There can be no object with- 
out a subject, says Mr. Grote, and therefore relativity is 
the whole and sole philosophy. If the phrase without 
the thing relativity dissatisfied, here we are perplexed 
with the reason for the general doctrine itself. Surely 
it is a commonplace that cognition is impossible without 
the coincidence of an object and a subject. So far as I 
know, no human being ever denied that. Mr. Grote 



THE SOPHISTS. 387 

evidently speaks, however, as if there were those in the 
world who pretend to know an absolute, and an absolute 
by Mr. Grote is defined (vol. i. p. 23) as ■ something 
apart from or independent of one's own thinking mind.' 
This, then, is simply a mistake. Hegel is probably an 
absolutist to Mr. Grote, but Hegel's idea of cognition is 
Mr. Grote's own. Inseparability of subject and object 
is one of Hegel's arguments against what is called imme- 
diate knowledge. Hegel, however, did not find this single 
inseparability the instant open Sesame into an entire 
new philosophy. Had he done here, indeed, as Mr. 
Grote has done, we never should have had a philosophy 
at all. Sensation without a subject, idea without a sub- 
ject, that is impossible, Hegel might have said, but that 
is not much, cela va sans dire. The important thing is 
to see that sensations and ideas in a subject constitute 
the universe, and that philosophy will be an explanation 
of these and of it. Philosophy, in short, will have for 
result relativity, but relativity — in system. 

But when we read on, and get more familiar with Mr. 
Grote's conception of the relation between subject and ob- 
ject, we find that Mr. Grote's relativity does not depend 
on this relation as a relation at all. Mr. Grote's relativity 
is due not to the relation between the two terms, subject 
and object, but wholly and solely to the peculiar nature 
of one of the terms, the subject. Mind, it seems, is so 
peculiar a Gorgon that it transforms objects into its own 
nature ; and so, no two minds being alike, no two objects 
are alike, and therefore it is that all is relative. All 
this is said a hundred times in the exposition of the 
Theaetetus, and quotation is almost superfluous. For 
exemplification, however, it is impossible altogether to 
dispense with an extract. P. 328, Mr. Grote says : — 
* My intellectual activity — my powers of remembering, 
imagining, ratiocinating, combining, etc., are a part of 
my mental nature, no less than my powers of sensible 
perception : my cognitions and beliefs must all be deter- 
mined by, or relative to, this mental nature : to the turn 
and development which all these various powers have 
taken in my individual case. However multifarious the 
mental activities may be, each man has his own peculiar 
allotment and manifestations thereof, to which his cogni- 
tions must be relative.' And again (p. 335): 'Object is im- 
plicated with, limited or measured by, Subject: a doctrine 
proclaiming the relativeness of all objects, perceived, con- 



388 ANNOTATIONS. 

ceived, known, or felt — and the omnipresent involutior 
of the perceiving, conceiving, knowing, or feeling Sub- 
ject ; the object varying with the subject. "As things 
appear to me, so they are to me ; as they appear to you, 
so they are to you." This theory is just and important, 
if rightly understood and explained.' Mr. Grote's asser- 
tion of subjective truth as the only truth cannot then, in 
view of such extracts (which might easily be multiplied a 
hundredfold), for an instant be doubted. It will be 
found, indeed, that the theory spoken of, as 'understood 
and explained' by Mr. Grote, amounts to the proposition 
of Protagoras in its unrestricted sense. Nay, Mr. Grote 
is even willing to waive dispute, and accept the Platonic 
expression itself in regard to this proposition, on condition 
only of a small addition. That every opinion of every man 
is true, this, to be perfectly accurate for Mr. Grote, requires 
but the simple addition of — to that man himself. It is in 
this sense that he says, p. 351, ' The dog, the horse, the 
new-born child, the lunatic, is each a measure of truth to 
himself. l Now, this can only mean that what the man, 
the dog, the horse, the new-born child, the lunatic feels, 
he feels. But do we need a philosophy of philosophies 
to tell us that ? That this theory, if a theory, is ' just,' 
there can be no doubt, but ' important' — that I fear it must 
remain only for Mr. Grote. What is true and right for a 
man, is true and right for that man. This, indeed, on its 
first aspect, is but an idle tautology, and a man would 
as little think of contradicting it as he would think of 
contradicting any other identical proposition. The planet 
is a planet, the stone is a stone ; we are all agreed on 
these truths, and quite as much on these others, that 
what the man, or child, or lunatic, or dog, or horse 
feels, he feels. Not one of us, however, would, in such 
truths, see progress — the slightest quiver of an advance. 
Mr. Grote must mean more, then, than that identity is 
identity. But this more can only be that the proposition, 
what is true and right to a man, is true and right to that 
man, constitutes the single definition of truth, the single 
definition of right. The reason of one man differs, Mr. 
Grote says, most materially from that of another ; conse- 
quently the truth of one man differs most materially from 
that of another ; and there is no truth whatever in exist- 
ence, but this the truth for each. As a universal reason 
is a fiction, so a universal truth is a fiction. This, then, 
is the proposition of Protagoras pure and simple. There 



THE SOPHISTS. 389 

is no call for Mr. Grote's tautological addition ; that tau- 
tology is, as said, idle. Mr. Grote does in very deed 
categorically aver : There is no truth but the truth for 
each. Truth, then, is as multiform as the particular 
minds. No object is independent of the particular sub- 
jects ; these subjects are many, and all different ; and 
truth, consequently, is particular to each particular. The 
self colours all, the object cannot be given uncoloured, 
and each self has its own colour. It is this assumed 
necessary subjectivity of all objects that is the source of 
the singular alliance of modern Belativity and modern 
Psychology (English both) with Berkeley. These new 
allies of Berkeley, however, give a strange material turn 
to the idealism of that philosopher : at least, they cer- 
tainly accentuate the individual subject, and on his 
sensuous or material side. It is to be admitted, however, 
that the brain may be regarded as ideal, with thought as 
relatively a function of it ; and, in that case, we may 
hope that the ideal scalpel will be more successful than 
the real one in detecting the bridge between what must 
still be called — at least relatively- — matter and mind. 
Truth, then, is each individual's proper and peculiar 
colour, and no two individuals are alike. Neither, then, 
are any two colours alike, are any two truths alike. 
Each truth, consequently, as equally authentic, is equally 
legitimate. There is no criterion of truth and right, but 
what each particular man feels and thinks — feels and 
thinks at the time. Either Mr. Grote's entire speech 
goes to this, or, as said, to the most trivial tautology. 
Well then, if it be so, what is true and right to me in 
feeling and thought, shall also be true and right to me in 
will and action ; and as one man is as good as another, 
every man has a perfect right to do as he likes. This is 
too evidently absurd, however, and, though this is really 
what is explicit in the teaching of Mr. Grote, there is 
something quite different implicit 

Mr. Grote started with the relation, but presently de- 
serted it for one of the extremes, and to it sacrificed the 
other. This, indeed, is his single operation : he has de- 
stroyed the object before the subject. In reference to 
any relation, however, involving, as it necessarily does, 
both terms, no one can express either without implying 
the other. And this is the case here. In explicating 
subjectivity, Mr. Grote has only been correspondently 
implicating objectivity. That is a natural dialectic which 



390 ANNOTATIONS. 

may be recommended to the attention of every Relativist. 
Proofs of this correspondent implication of objectivity 
exist, as said, in every sentence of Mr. Grote that — con- 
sciously — has no aim but to explicate subjectivity. We 
can only take an example or two. * Comparisons and 
contrasts/ he says, p. 341, * gradually multiplied between 
one consciousness and another lead us to distinguish, , etc. 
There is, then, necessarily, an element capable of com- 
parison and communication in us, and the result of this 
process can only be a body of generalized distinctions. 
But this element is not possibly the subjective element : 
we cannot possibly compare even our smells or our tastes ; 
what we can possibly compare are only our thoughts : the 
47th proposition of Euclid is the same for all of us. 
P. 349, ' It is for the reader to judge how far my reasons 
are satisfactory to his mind ; ' what does that appeal 
amount to ? Why, to this, that both writer and reader 
may meet in judgment, that there is a common ground 
between them, and that the writer hopes he has been true 
to it. Mr. Grote admits (p. 352) all men not to be equally 
wise ; but is it possible to talk so without the admission 
of a standard? He only who can feel heat qua heat 
knows the degrees of it, and so of wisdom. In fact, 
the moment you say not equally the principle of sub- 
jective relativity is virtually abandoned, a new test, 
a new criterion, a new standard, is introduced ; it 
is no longer / for myself, but another for me, and 
that because he possesses not only subjective wisdom 
but objective wisdom. That is, the moment we say 
not equally we have left subjectivity, and entered ob- 
jectivity. Page 351, Mr. Grote says, that though the 
dog, the horse, the new-born child, the lunatic, etc., is a 
measure of truth each to himself, it is not declared that 
* either of them is a measure of truth to me, to you, or 
to any ordinary bystander.' This, explicitly, is the hope- 
less tautology already signalized, each is each, and the 
standard of truth is the individual. As many individuals, 
so many standards of truth ; no judge, therefore, and 
consequently no sentence. This is the explication, but 
the implication is, there is a standard of truth. Each is a 
measure of truth to himself, but he is not a measure of 
truth to me, etc. (Is this thing to which Mr. Grote ex- 
plicitly refers a measure of truth at all ? It were a 
strange standard that were a standard only to one ; very 
strange standards these where each has his own !) Im- 



THE SOPHISTS. 391 

plicitly, then, a standard, a measure, that is, a common 
standard, a common measure, is, re vera, referred to. 
What is it ? The measure for me, for you, for any ordi- 
nary bystander, it is precisely that measure that is alone 
truth, that is alone wanted. That the particular senti- 
ency is only in the particular sentient is a truism, but it 
is not, in this reference, truth. The truth, really, is not 
that what I feel I feel ; that is subjectivity pure and 
simple ; my feeling, if only my feeling is worthless, is as 
good as a nonens. Truth begins only when what I feel, 
another feels, when what I think, another thinks. Then, 
and then only, as said, have we entered objectivity. 
Until the dog, the horse, etc., can introduce us to this 
region, we may very well leave them alone. In point of 
fact, does the universe allow this measure of truth that 
the dog is to himself, the horse to himself, the lunatic to 
himself, etc. ? No ; dog, horse, lunatic, have to become, 
each in his place, representatives of the measure of reason. 
And, as for the child, what is it, that is at all seen in it, 
at all honoured in it? Why, reason, universal reason, 
man as man. Why is that squalling struggling impotence 
held at the font, amid the awe-struck faces of grown 
men and grown women, with all the solemnity of cere- 
mony, with all the sanctity of religion ? Possibly these 
grown men, and women, and all concerned, may seem 
fools to Mr. Grote. But the one fact present is, that 
that squalling impotence is implicitly a man, is implicitly 
reason. For that cause is all the gravity of the solem- 
nity ; and for this cause, that the child is not a measure 
of truth even for itself, do fathers and mothers, and 
godfathers and godmothers there take vows to replace its 
unreason with their reason till, in the ripeness of time, it 
is itself, in reason, a freeman of the universe. 

How differently the general problem would have 
seemed to Mr. Grote had he but made both terms of the 
relation, and equally so, explicit ! Did it never occur to Mr. 
Grote to question what I have called the Gorgonization of 
the object on the part of the subject? This Gorgoniza- 
tion, it is to be admitted, is the belief of all subjective 
idealism — (the object can only be known in me, in the 
subject, and therefore it is subjective, and, if subjective, 
ideal) — but still it is capable of question. Does it not 
seem absurd to say, that by interposition of mind, by 
which alone knowledge is possible, knowledge is at tho 
game time impossible ? What alone renders something 



392 ANNOTATIONS, 

possible, alone renders it impossible ! I know, but, be- 
cause I know, I do not know ! I see, but, because I see, 
I do not see ! Is it a fact, then, that, because both — 
subject and object — are present in cognition, the one 
must be destroyed by the other, and not that cognition 
may be made true, but that it may be made false ? In a 
word, is it not worth while to consider the whole antithesis : 
an object is known because there is a subject to know 
it ; an object is not known because there is a subject to 
know it ? But here we can only suggest. 

If it is quite true, then, as Mr. Grote says, that the auto- 
nomy of each individual mind, the right of private judg- 
ment, or as we phrase it, the right of subjectivity, is the 
basis of philosophy and the centre of appeal, we must 
bear in mind that it is still only a half truth, and that it 
is a whole truth only when complemented with the right 
of objectivity. A being possessed of reason is not to be 
subjected — unless as a last resource — to mechanical force : 
his conviction is to be addressed and carried with us. 
This, doubtless, lies in the very fact of the cross-exami- 
nation of Socrates (to refer to another argument of Mr. 
Grote's), but in that fact there lies also more. The maieu- 
tic art of the son of Phsenarete the midwife was for a 
birth — the second birth — the birth of the object out of 
the subject. That is the end of all true maieutics, elimi- 
nation of the position of Mr. Grote, and establishment of 
that of Socrates — the authority of the universal. Into 
the service of the universal, the individual must harness 
himself. Though, then, it is my right that I should be 
present with my own conviction to whatever truth is pro- 
posed, it is the right of this truth also, so to speak, that 
it should not be a mere subjectivity, a mere singularity, 
a mere peculiarity in a single individual ; it is the right 
of this truth that it should be objective — in Mr. Grote's 
own language, it is the right of this truth that it should 
be reasoned truth. By this phrase, which occurs very 
commonly in Mr. Grote, he implicitly abandons the whole 
position of subjectivity. Truth to be truth at all must 
be reasoned truth. Mr. Grote has still the difficulty, in- 
deed — who is to dictate this reasoned truth ? But in the 
case of reasoned truth is any dictator required ? Reason 
is a common possession, and we either all already do meet 
in reason, or we all shall meet. Mr. Grote's surprise at 
opposition on the part of Schwegler and Prantl to ' noto- 
rious facts,' was, as we have seen, the naive avowal of a 



THE SOPHISTS. 393 

like insight at bottom. Notorious facts, reasoned truth 
— that is objectivity. When Mr. Grote considers only 
the infinitely different colours of the infinitely different 
subjects, he has before him a world of infinitely different 
objects also. But the difference in which we part must 
not blind us to the identity in which we meet. The world 
is not an evershifting chaos of countless particulars only. 
There are laws in the world-system. The daily life of the 
universe and the daily life of man pass, so to speak, in a 
maze and mist of the contingent, the relative ; particular 
clashes with particular, individual with individual, and 
the entanglement seems hopeless. Nevertheless, there is 
within the maze and mist a solid core which is universal, 
and not particular, necessary and not contingent, abso- 
lute and not relative. This core, this system, is, in ulti- 
mate name, reason ; and it is to this reason, as the com- 
mon possession of humanity, that Prantl and Schwegler 
appeal. As common possession, it is universal identity 
certainly, but as possession of humanity it can hardly be 
called impersonal. With reference to the universe, in 
general, indeed, this reason cannot be called impersonal, 
for it is a life ; neither can it be called infallible, if in- 
fallible means fixed, for a life is progress. 

But, for reasoned truth, whether dictators be required 
or not, do we not possess them ? What are books for 
example ? (The Book, let us only suggest.) The Organon 
of Aristotle is, in very truth, not the particular sub- 
ject Aristotle ; it is an object — an object received, per- 
fected, transmitted : the Organon of Aristotle is therefore 
objective incorporation with us. Books ! and who again 
is to interpret your books ? Is that, then, really so diffi- 
cult ? Do we not all learn our astronomy and mathe- 
matics contentedly enough ? Even in other sciences is 
the difficulty a want of interpreters ? But, books apart, 
and let it be contained where it may, there really is 
knowledge objective and common to us all. It is the 
very purpose of the Thesetetus to point out this know- 
ledge. Mr. Grote ignores this, and will have it that the 
Theaetetus has only a negative result. We can trust 
Schwegler, however, and on his authority believe the 
Theaetetus to be a demonstration of the fact, of objective 
knowledge. To the contributions of the senses from 
without there are additions from the faculties within, and 
these additions, comparable the one with the other, are 
the same in each of us and alike for us all. These addi- 



394= ANNO TA T10NS. 

tions have in modern times been called categories, and 
much has already been done towards their discovery and 
summation. Space is not exactly a category, but as con- 
ceived by Kant, it will illustrate these. The contribu- 
tions of special sense, Kant holds to receive their dispo- 
sitions in space, as it were by a projection from within. 
In space we all agree — even conceive it actually external 
— it is an example of an objective truth. So time, so 
quantity, etc. But the true answer to Mr. Grote's ques- 
tion about a judge, an interpreter, a dictator, etc., is — 
the State. 

Where can you get a better proof of relativity than the 
State ? — it is never a year the same ! As a life, as pro- 
gress, the State must change ; nevertheless it is the true 
authority. Even Socrates had to leave all abstract defi- 
nition of justice and appeal to the State. Instead of the 
State, Mr. Grote seems to advocate individual authority. 
This is the only provision for agreement — for approach to 
a universal — which I can find in Mr. Grote. 1 may try 
to get others to accept my views ; and so a certain esti- 
mation on the part of others, a certain authority in their 
eyes, becomes possible for me. Still Mr. Grote speaks of 
this authority as something merely subjective ; as some- 
thing dependent on the good-pleasure of others. Is it 
good-pleasure, then, and not reason that leads me to pre- 
fer the better physician, or even the better baker ? Mi*. 
Grote talks of this tendency in us towards rational autho- 
rity, quite in the manner of the Auf klarung, as if it were a 
mere subjective tendency, a mere predisposition in us. It 
is in this way that Mr. Buckle talks of our superstitions, 
our received opinions, our prejudices. Still, what could 
be the only ultimate result of this process, even if merely 
subjective, as Mr. Grote seems to believe ? Why, this is 
Hobbes's helium omnium in omnes, and its result is — the 
State. But this result has left that helium long behind 
it, and it were an anachronism to return to it. That 
helium^ indeed, was but the initial state of nature. That 
we have been delivered from the tyranny of such mere 
subjective opinion, and such mere subjective authority — 
for this we have to thank the State. The State has a 
right of coercion, and in this right, Mr. Grote will 
recognise an objective element, a universal in which we 
all agree, or which is capable of being brought home to 
the subjective conviction of each of us. 

There is a period in the history of the State when 



THE SOPHISTS. 395 

people live in tradition ; that is a period of unreflected 
Sittlichlceit, or natural observance. Then there comes a 
time when the observances are questioned, and when the 
right or truth they involve is reflected into the subject. 
This is a period of Aufkl'arung, and for Sittlichkeit there 
is substituted Moralitat, subjective morality : the sub- 
ject will approve nought but what he finds inwardly true 
to himself, to his conscience. In this period, then, all 
is subjective ; what is holy and authoritative is the 
spirit of the subject, and of the subject as independent 
individual. But then, evidently, there is no guarantee 
for the correctness of the spirit ; each refers to his own 
spirit, and subject may differ from subject indefinitely, 
— agreement there may be none. But Society cannot 
exist so ; a system of observances again results, and this 
time of reflected observances, that is, of such observances 
as approve themselves to the consciousness of every com- 
petent subject. The subject now is not, as under Mora- 
Mtat, shut into his own self, but has the enjoyment of 
himself objectively, outwardly, as realized in actual ob- 
servances, institutions, etc. There is now a reign of 
objective reason. Here is a triplet, then, of substantial 
worth, in contrast with which the triplet of Comte cannot 
conceal how much it is but French precipitate and super- 
ficial theorizing. It is referred to here, however, to 
make credible how it is that the State may, in its laws 
and institutions, in its arts and sciences, in its customs 
and manners, constitute the arbiter and dictator of what 
is objectively true, objectively right. What stadium 
Mr. Grote occupies in it will be readily perceived. It is 
this stadium that prescribes the whole general position of 
Mr. Grote, as in his account of the pre-Socratic philo- 
sophy, where he disposes all (not without a little corn- 
pressure in passing to the reason of Heraclitus, the Nous 
of Anaxagoras, or the argumentation and place of Zeno) 
into the due series that stretches from ancient religious 
superstition to modern physical enlightenment, enforcing 
always the single duty of the negative to those * early 
doses,' which we all ' swallow/ ' of authoritative dogmas 
and proofs dictated by our teachers.' On all points, I 
have been able to say only a tithe of what I wished to 
say. I have done no more, indeed, than indicate. I 
trust, however, that regard as I may the objective pro- 
duct of Mr. Grote, I have neither been unjust to it, nor 
failed in admiration of his own great subjective ability. 



396 ANNOTA TIONS. 



XII. — Socrates. 

IN" passing from the first (the Pre-Socratic) to the 
second (the Socratic) period of the history of an- 
cient philosophy there is room for a moment's retro- 
spect. In looking back, then, we see that the Ionics 
began the philosophical, as in contrast to the mytho- 
logical, explanation of existence by the proposal of a 
material principle (water, air, etc.) as unity and source 
of all things. The Pythagoreans proposed nextly (in 
numerical ratios) a formal principle; and were followed, 
in their turn, by the Eleatics, who, in the necessary 
affirmative substrate that was conceived to underlie the 
negative contingency of existence, sought to replace both 
material and formal principles by an intelligible one. As 
a truer basis of the all of things, Heraclitus set up, in 
lieu of the simple affirmative of Being, the negativo- 
affirmative of Becoming. Becoming was no concrete 
principle, however, but simply the abstraction of process, 
of change, as such. However true a characteristic of 
things, it was a naming merely, and not an explaining. 
Passing over Empedocles, who was but an imperfect step 
in the same direction as, and only partially suggestive to, 
Anaxagoras, it was the Atomists now who returned to 
an attempt at concrete explanation. Their materials, the 
atoms, were certainly an ingenious machinery in inter- 
pretation of the being of things. Anaxagoras saw, how- 
ever, that the becoming of things, evidently subjected to 
law and order, could only be unsatisfactorily accounted 
for by mechanical necessity and chance, and he pro- 
posed, instead, the agency of a designing mind. One can 
see, then, that Anaxagoras constituted the completion of 
a circle of thought, the completion of an intellectual era, 
which, in Hegelian language, may be regarded as corre- 
sponding to the moment of simple apprehension. The 
next logical moment, then, was plainly that of judgment, 
and it was initiated by the Sophists. The Sophists, 
namely, were thrown back from the thought that was 
pointed to in the universe by Anaxagoras to the thought 
as thought that existed in themselves. To that thought, 
subjective thought, all things, whether in nature or 
society, were now submitted with the necessary result of 
a complete Aufklarung, the Grecian Illumination. It is 
here that Socrates comes in. His moral purity revolted 



SOCRATES. 397 

at the instability and insecurity to which all rules of 
conduct were reduced by the principle of the Sophists. 
So influenced, Socrates sought a standard of conduct. 
This standard he conceived himself to find in what we 
may call scientific generalization. Let us but know, he 
thought, the universal or generic notion of any duty, and 
then we shall know all forms of that duty, and of neces- 
sity practise them. Through generalization, each duty 
was, to Socrates, hioicable, teachable, and (with all its 
forms) one. 

In support of the doctrine of objectivity as against 
subjectivity and Mr. Grote, contained in the ' Transition 
to Socrates.' I may quote Hegel, who, in the sections 
[Hist of PhiV. on Socrates and the Sophists, speaks often 
thus : — ' True thought is such that its import is not sub- 
jective but objective, objectivity having the sense here 
of substantial universality, and not of external objectivity; 
what mind thus produces from its own self must be 
produced from it as active in a universal manner, not 
from its passions, private interests, and selfish motives ; 
man as thinking and as giving himself a universal im- 
port, man in his rational nature and universal substan- 
tiality, not every man in his particular speciality as this 
contingent individual man, is the required measure.' 
From Erdmann, too, I may quote this : — 'All truth lies 
in the subject, but only so far as he is universal j not 
iras UpBfitawos, as with Protagoras, but 6 &i>6pu7ro$, as with 
Socrates, is the measure of all things, the one being but 
i] ds, the other 6 S-eo? ; according to Protagoras, on the 
theoretical side, that is true which to me is true, and on 
the practical, that good which to me is good ; but in 
such subjectivism, all objective, universally valid prin- 
ciples lose their meaning, objectivity disappears, in short, 
and the subject is left free to turn all as he pleases.' 

As regards what is said of Hegel's view of the fate of 
Socrates, I may remark that this is, perhaps, unworthy 
o! Schwegler, who, as in a preceding case, while indebted 
to Hegel for every word he uses, seeks to give himself an 
air of originality by a slight turn in the application of 
the word. The position of Hegel and the position of 
Schwegler, despite the apparent opposition of the latter. 
are essentially the same. It is to Hegel, in short, that 
we owe the deep and perfect exposition of the whole 
situation, nor is it quite certain, indeed, that Schwegler 
is on the level of it. The respective intercalation will 



398 ANNOTATIONS. 

be found to contain, it is hoped, a satisfactory elucidation 
of the vast, vital, and all-important Hegelian distinction 
between Moralitat and SittlicKkeit. 



XIII.— Plato. 

THERE is but little here that calls for explanation. 
The term protreptic, for example, is now not un- 
known to dictionaries ; and both it and the earlier par- 
enetic may be varied by exhortative. Thetic, again, is 
also to be found in dictionaries, and refers to demon- 
strations that are not negative or indirect, but, on the 
contrary, direct and positive. The phrase non-being 
may sometimes appear perplexing, but it means simply 
negation — negation that assumes, so to speak, a positive 
virtue, when in relation to the affirmation to which it is 
opposed. Cold and darkness, for example, are so related 
to heat and light. This is what is alluded to in the 
words pairs and counterparts, which I have intercalated 
into the parenthesis at the top of page 66. Given light, 
its counterpart, darkness, is also given ; and such ideas 
as motion, rest, heat, cold, likeness, unlikeness, identity, 
difference, discretion, continuity, etc., are similarly 
situated. Non-being, the idea of negation, is essential 
to any distinction, to any life, to any concrete. Any 
affirmation in this universe is only through negation. 
My ego, your ego, any ego, possesses its present affirma- 
tion only through preceding negation ; it is by virtue of 
what it was, by virtue, that is, of what it is not. The 
affirmation of the universe itself is kept alive, so to 
speak, only by means of a process of incessant negation. 
This introduces us, then, to the same element that we 
possess in Hegel, the Logic of whom may be regarded as, 
in a certain sort, a completion of — what is only piece- 
meal and partial in Plato — the exposition of the ideas. 
Plato's main object is to extend and complete the work 
of Socrates ; that is, to discover the generic notions, not 
only of all moral or practical things (duties), but of all 
things whatever, theoretic and aesthetic as well as prac- 
tical. The phrase the idea is often used in a collective 
manner for this system of all ideas. It is the ' diamond 
net' which underlies and supports the contingent, — the 
element of Eleatic Being as against that of Heraclitic 
Becoming. The secret of Plato, then, is, in a sort, 



ARISTOTLE. 399 

simply generalization, and what is meant by Plato's 
ideas, Plato's ideal theory, etc., is now perfectly intel- 
ligible. His main error was to hypostasize the ideas, and 
see them only in isolation and separation from the con- 
crete. Opinion (56fa, Meinung, Vorstellung) has a pecu- 
liar meaning with the Greeks and Germans ; it is 
probably sufficiently explained by the parenthesis 
attached to it at the foot of page 71. To the peculiar 
German term substantial, which is analogous to Sittlich, 
I have added, on page 89, similar explanatory paren- 
theses. In Germany, the discussion of the order, dates, 
and authenticity of the Platonic dialogues still con- 
tinues ; Schwegler's relative ruling (though not original 
to him) is exceedingly satisfactory, and all debate will 
probably in the end settle into it. 1 How much the state- 
ments of Schwegler are, on all points, conditioned by 
the labours of Hegel before him, and how little he de- 
sires to conceal this, may be understood from the fact 
that what I have marked as a quotation at the foot of 
page 60 is not so marked by Schwegler, and yet it 
occurs verbatim, page 152 of Hegel's second part of the 
History of Philosophy. 



XIV. —Aristotle. 

THE philosophy of Aristotle is evidently conditioned 
by effort to remedy the defects which he himself 
signalizes in the philosophy of Plato. In the latter, 
noumenon and phenomenon idly confronted each other — 
movement there was none : addition of that element, then, 
shall now convert the universe into an explained unity. 
Aristotle's expedient for this conversion is, in the main, 
the single conception of development. Development, how- 
ever, is but a more concrete form of the Becoming of 
Heraclitus ; and thus it is that, if Plato was Eleatic, 
Aristotle is in turn Heraclitic. To Aristotle it appears 
the very nature of what is to pass from potentiality into 
actuality. What is, as potential, is matter ; as actual, 
form. The universe, then, is but a gradation between 
these extremes. The higher extreme, again, is identical 
with the Platonic ideal element, with reason, with the 
Good. In this way we see that to Aristotle there is no 
disjunction ; the higher element is immanent in the 
lower ; the ideas are converted into entelechies, into the 

1 See Freface, p. xii. 



400 ANNOTATIONS. 

ends and notions, into the Bestimmungen (in the double 
sense of determinations and destinations), that constitute 
the life and very being of things. Thus it is that Aris- 
totle, if on one side an absolute empiricist, is, on the 
other, an absolute idealist; and it is quite a similar 
general tendency of thought that will be found to condi- 
tion his further modification of the Platonic teaching in 
the concrete spheres of ethics, physics, the state, etc. 
In a certain way, then, the Aristotelian philosophy may 
be regarded as but an application of the Platonic principle 
to the concrete ; and it is the distinction of potentiality 
and actuality (identical with matter and form) that, on 
the whole, constitutes its characteristic. Evidently, then, 
as Hegel was not without debt to Plato, so neither is he 
without perhaps a greater debt to Aristotle. To give the 
first example that suggests itself, reference to the * notion 
of development* and that of the 'concrete* at pages 33 
and 35 of the first part of the History of Philosophy will 
clearly demonstrate this. Such phrases (in Schwegler's 
text) as 'thought the absolute reality of matter,' the 
'immanence of the universal in the singular,' a 'being 
that is eternally being produced, ' ' a goal that is in every 
instant attained by the movement of the in-itself to the 
for -itself? etc., are not less Hegelian than Aristotelian. 
Hegel indeed substituted a Heraclitic for an Eleatic 
element in the ideas of Plato ; he gave them movement : 
issuing the one from the other they constitute in him 
but a single process. In this way he but completed the 
work of both the Greeks. 

At page 94 will be found a peculiar German use of the 
term psychological. By a parenthesis I have represented 
it to mean indicative of human motive. In his Philoso- 
phy of History \ pp. 39, 40, the word will be found so 
used by Hegel. He defines there this psychological mode 
of view, and proceeds : — ' These psychologues apply 
themselves in particular to the peculiarities of great 
historical figures as individuals. A man must eat and 
drink, stands in connexion with friends and acquain- 
tances, has feelings and ebullitions of the moment. No 
man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre, is a common pro- 
verb ; I added to it — and Goethe repeated the addition 
ten years later — not because the hero is not a hero, but 
because the valet is a valet. By such psychological 
valets,' etc. The word in this sense is not uncommon in 
later German writers. 



ARISTOTLE. 401 

At page 98, metaphysics, as the science of being, will 
be found to be distinguished from the other sciences in 
such a manner a3 explains the antithesis of finite and 
infinite thought, so common in Schwegler and the other 
modern Germans, The ordinary sciences, namely, have 
each its own sphere, its own laws and principles. They 
are thus the business of finite thought. The result, in 
their regard, is only complete within the concrete pre- 
suppositions of each. Result is beside result, and none is 
the universal result But suppose we can account for 
being as being, explain how there should be such a fact 
as existence at all, and demonstrate the course it will 
take, then plainly we are occupied with that which is all- 
eml racing and infinite. Schelling is reported, at page 
305. to hold, 'that speculation is the whole, — vision, 
: ."utemplation, that is, of everything in God; science 
itself is valuable only so far as it is speculative, so far as 
•it :s contemplation of God as he is.' Speculative thought 
has the same sense a3 infinite thought : it is that thought 
which considers being as being, or all things in God. 
Spinoza's phrase, sub specie aternitatis, has the same refer- 
ence. That Aristotle should have called hi3 first philo- 
B : phy theology, then, is now not difficult to understand. 
The speculative of Hegel is also clear ; it is what explana- 
: irfly snhlatefl all things into the unity of God ; or, in gene- 
ral, that is speculative, that sublates a many into one (or 
. . rao). A speculative philosophy, consequently, must 
be a chain of mutually sublating counterparts. This will 
explain the censure to which, on page 100, Aristotle is 
subjected, for having * supplied in his logic only a 
natural history of finite thought.' Aristotle, that is, has 
only analysed the general forms in or through which 
each empirical subject thinks thing3 ; he has separated 
things and thoughts, which, limited the one by the other, 
are both thus finite ; he has not evolved those great 
forms of thought, which, applicable to the universe as a 
whole, constitute a universal logic. Aristotle's logic is 
but empirically taken up in reference to the thought of 
the subject, not speculatively in reference to the thought 
of God; and thus it is finite, and not infinite. Common 
modern logic has gone beyond Aristotle, indeed, for it 
has sought to divorce things (or matter) altogether from 
thoughts Cor form). The addition of the fourth figure, I 
may remark, bv the bye, is regarded neither by Kant n^r 
Hegel u anv improvement on Aristotle (see die falsch<-: 
2 



402 ANNOTATIONS. 

SpitzfindigJceit der vier syllogistischen Figuren of the one, 
and section 187 of the Encyclopaedia of the other). On 
page 102, the phrase ' the finite import,' as the paren- 
thesis attempts to point out, refers to the identity of the 
idea and the sensuous thing, when what import consti- 
tutes each is considered. They have, in short, the same 
import, only the one is called ideal, and the other real. 
On page 108, the word Entelechie may prove troublesome : 
it refers, however, to what Hegel calls idea, a concrete 
which materially realizes a formal notion or purpose. 
Life is an idea, an entelechie ; in it the body is the 
material realization of the soul or subject which is the 
formal element ; they mutually interpenetrate and give 
actuality the one to the other. Still relatively to the 
body, the soul is eminently the entelechie ; the body is 
only for it, it is the true actuality. The word patho- 
logical, page 116, is one in frequent use now ; it refers to 
the element of instinctive feeling, of instinctive sensa- 
tional motive. Any other passages, or words, likely to 
prove difficult, I know not in this section, which consti- 
tutes, with the preceding one, perhaps the most perfect 
portion of the whole book. 



XV. — The Post-Aristotelian Philosophy. 

THEBE is little to be said here, for no explanation 
seems wanted. I would only call attention to the 
excellence of the description of the fall of Greece (pp. 
120-3), for the importance of the lesson it extends to 
ourselves. We, too, seem to live at a very similar re- 
lative epoch : ' the simple trust of the subject in the given 
world is completely at an end.' In the Post- Aristotelian 
philosophy, however, there is still a gain for the spirit of 
man. This gain is the Roman element ; the individual 
is free, respected for himself, a subject on his own 
account, a person. Nor in our modern world is there 
any want of a similar element. The error now rather is 
that the principle of subjectivity is in excess, and requires 
to be restored to the control of the universal. If subjec- 
tivity has just emptied itself, in morals, politics, and 
religion, of an unreflected objectivity, it must now refill 
itself (in all these interests) with a reflected objectivity. 
Perhaps it is hardly worth remarking that, though 
Schwegler's excellence is synopsis, reduction, still his 



TRANSITION TO MODERN PHILOSOPH Y. 403 

fault is that of — occasionally — keeping up the note too 
long, or of a turn too many. Glimpses of this, I think, 
we can catch in Stoicism, In these sections, I find no 
room for explanation ; reserving criticism also with a 
view to space, I pass on to 



XVI. — Transition to Modern Philosophy. 

ENGLISH readers will be apt to think Schwegler unjust 
to Bacon here, and, perhaps, to some extent, not 
without reason. It is useless to endeavour to depose Bacon 
from his position at the head of modern philosophy : he 
certainly first clearly and consciously mooted the emanci- 
pating thoughts which are our constitutive element now. 
Probably, however, Englishmen place their countryman, 
in himself, too high. It is impossible to find a more 
careful, more exhaustive, more impartial estimate than 
that of Erdmann, and his result is not much higher than 
that of Schwegler. The account of Ueberweg is a very 
excellent one, and it is to the same effect. Then, as for 
Hegel, though he must be allowed to do Bacon great 
justice on the whole, he is to be found also speaking 
thus : — * As Bacon has always had the praise of the man 
who directed knowledge to its true source, experience, so 
is he in effect the special leader and representative of 
what in England has been called Philosophy, and beyond 
which Englishmen have not yet quite advanced ; for 
they seem to constitute that people in Europe, which, 
limited to understanding of actuality, is destined, like the 
huckster and workman class in the State, to live always 
immersed in matter, with daily fact for their object, but 
not reason.' It is from Hegel, too, that the gibe about 
mottoes comes. I may remark also that Hegel supports 
himself with reference to Bacon by a quotation from an 
English article (Quarterly Review, vol. xvi., April 1817, 
p. 53), which is really striking. In deprecation of the 
ordinary censure of Bacon's character on two points, 
Erdmann writes thus : — ' The complete want of fortune, 
doubly painful from his high connexions, the mass of debts, 
the three-and-twenty years of expectations (perpetually 
renewed and perpetually disappointed) of becoming a 
salaried, instead of an unsalaried official, would probably 
have made, even in a stronger character, the love of 
money a habit : the severity with which Bacon has been 



404 ANNOTATIONS. 

blamed for acting as counsel against his fallen patron 
Essex, and afterwards publishing a report of the process 
justifying the Queen, appears unjust to him who knows 
how Bacon laboured to bring the Earl to reason and the 
Queen to mercy, and reflects, besides, that what the latter 
committed to him, he was obliged to execute by virtue of 
his office. ' Erdmann has a service also to Bacon in his 
eye, when he quotes the fallen man's exclamation on his 
own sentence : ' Never was there a sentence juster, and 
yet never before me had England so honest a Lord 
Chancellor.' 

I would also bespeak attention for what is said in this 
section of Jacob Bbhm. We have here the first note of 
what is specially and peculiarly German philosophy. 
This note is heard in such phrases as, ' width without 
end, stands in need of a straitness in which it may mani- 
fest itself/ etc. What is alluded to, then, is the element 
of negativity in God, or the necessity of an absolute 
difference even for the realization of his absolute identity ; 
and it is perhaps not easy to find any better expression 
than that for the main thought of HegeL 



XVII. — Descartes. 

ERDMANN (even in his Grundriss of the History of 
Philosophy) gives a much fuller account of Carte - 
sianism and Descartes than Schwegler does. Ueberweg 
also is both full and clear. Hegel's statement is hardly 
so full as that of either, but he brings to it, as usual, 
the singular depth and concentration of his own thought. 
For perfection of elaboration, comprehensiveness, and 
lucidity at once, Erdmann's exposition is, perhaps, 
to be preferred to all of them. From it, however, 
I shall borrow only one sentence, referring to Descartes 
on the passions : ' The soul being possessed of ability to 
evoke ideas, and through these give direction to the 
animal spirits, has it in its power indirectly to conquer the 
passions, as, for example, to neutralize the fear of danger 
through the hope of victory.' This seems a hint prac- 
tically useful, and yet we read that the philosopher him- 
self was, on the death of an illegitimate daughter who 
died while a child, unable to console himself. Ueberweg 
introduces some acute objections to the main positions 



DESCARTES. 405 

of Descartes. Thus he conceives the argumentation con- 
nected- with the cogito-sum to involve the assumption 
without proof of the notion of substance, as well as of the 
individuality of the ego, or of its self-identity and differ- 
ence from all else. He also objects to this, the first 
position of Descartes, that peculiar view of Kant in refer- 
ence to an inner sense over which poor Mr. Buckle has 
so stumbled, this, namely, that knowing our own inner 
like our outer, only sensuously, we know it not as it is, 
but as it seems, Hegel, as against Kant, may be referred 
to on the other side. A better objection of Ueberweg's 
is the relativity of the subjective criterion of truth (the 
clearness and certainty with which, etc.) : ■ the truth of 
my clear sensuous perception — of the sky, for example 
— may be modified and removed by a clear intellectual 
insight.' Other objections of Ueberweg are, the negation 
that after all lies in the notion of the infinite, the vicious 
circle of inferring the existence of God from a knowledge 
that depends on him, the destruction of the pineal 
gland not necessarily followed by the loss of life or of 
thought, the soul's capability of independent existence 
not to follow from my clear and distinct idea of its capa- 
bility of independent thought, etc. He adduces also the 
question of Gassendi, How can extended perceptions 
have place in what is inextended? Gassendi, too, is 
said by Ueberweg not to have used the ambulo-sum uni- 
versally attributed to him ; it appears that Descartes 
himself, in replying to the objection of actions in general, 
put into the mouth of Gassendi this action in particular. 
Another objection of Ueberweg is : — * In effect we become 
conscious of our existence through reflection on our will 
earlier thaa through reflection on our thought.' But in 
the identity of will and thought, this objection cannot 
avail much. The most important of all the objections of 
Ueberweg relates to the ontological argument (or to the 
inference of the being from the thought of God), even 
in its psychological form that points to the antithesis of 
the perfection of the thought and the imperfection of the 
thinker. He says (Grundriss, iii. p. 51) : — 'Descartes 
commits here the same error as Anselm, to neglect the 
condition of every categorical argument from the defini- 
tion, namely, that the position of the subject must be 
otherwise certain. . . . Descartes' premises lead logically 
only to the unmeaning conclusion, that if God is, existence 
accrues to him, and if God is feigned, he must be feigned 



408 ANNOTATIONS. 

as existent. Moreover the Cartesian form of the ontolo- 
gical argument has a defect from which that of Anselm 
is free,' — the one uses being as a predicate beside other 
predicates, the other as a particular kind of being. 
Hegel, in his section on Descartes, as everywhere else, 
is always forward to defend the metaphysical arguments 
for the existence of God, and certainly it is always to be 
borne in mind that God is different from all other sub- 
jects ; that this difference, indeed, is, that he cannot be 
thought as inexistent, that the very notion of him in- 
volves existence. 'Kant,' says Hegel (Hist of Phil. 
iii. p. 309) * has objected that being is not contained in 
thinking, that it is different from thinking. That is true, 
but still they are inseparable or constitute a single 
identity ; their unity is not to the prejudice of their 
difference. , P. 317, 'We find this highest idea in us. 
If we ask now whether this idea exist, why this is the 
idea, that existence is given with it, and to say it is only 
a thought, is to contradict the very meaning of the 
thought.' P. 321, 'An objection to this identity is now 
old, Kantian too : that from the notion of the most per- 
fect being, there follows no more than that in thought 
existence and the most perfect being are conjoined, but 
not out (outside) of thought. Put the very notion of 
existence is this negative of self -consciousness, not out of 
thought, but the thought of — the out of thought.' In 
another reference, I may quote (p. 311), 'It is absurd to 
suppose that the soul has thinking in one pocket, and 
seeing, willing, etc., in others. . . . Willing, seeing, hear- 
ing, walking, etc., are further modifications. . . . Only 
when I accentuate that ego is in these as thought, does 
it imply being ; for only with the universal is being 
united.' Hegel objects, however, to the method and 
march of Descartes as being but conceptive, and containing 
presuppositions. Throwing light on his own industry, 
he says (p. 310) : — ' In Descartes the necessity is not 
yet present, to develop the differences from the "I think ;" 
Fichte was the first to go that far, out of this point of 
absolute certainty to derive all determinations;' and 
p. 328, 'speculative cognition, the derivation from the 
notion, the free self-dependent development of the element 
itself, was first introduced by Fichte.' ' So now,' p. 312, 
'philosophy has got its own ground, thought proceeds, 
starts from thought, as what is certain in itself, not from 
something external, not from something given, not from 



MALEBRANCHE. 407 

an authority, but directly from this freedom that is con- 
tained in the "I think.'" 



XVIII. — Malebranche. 

ERDMANN'S 'Malebranche' occupies considerable 
space, that of Ueberweg but little. The former 
remarks of Malebranche that 'it must have been the 
self -righteousness of the redeemed Christian which caused 
his so rigorous damnation of Spinoza, in whose pan- 
theism spirits are modifications of infinite thought, in the 
same manner as bodies, with Malebranche, are limitations 
of extension : and yet he himself borders very close on 
what revolts him in the writings of that "miserable."' 
Ueberweg, in the doctrine of Malebranche, regards that 
operation of God 'as itself absolutely incomprehensible.' 
Hegel has always a very warm side for Malebranche, and 
we may remember some of his happiest criticisms in the 
Logic in that reference. The main thought of Male- 
branche, says Hegel, is, that 'the soul cannot get its 
ideas, notions, from external things.' ' God is the place 
of spirits, the universal of the spirit, as space is the 
universal, the place of bodies.' ' The soul, consequently, 
recognises in God what is in him, bodies so far as he 
conceives created beings, because all this is spiritual, 
intellectual, and present to the soul. ' ' When we would 
think of anything particular, we think first of the uni- 
versal ; it is the basis of the particular, as space to things : 
all essentiality is before our particular ideas, and this 
essentiality is the first.' 'We have a clear idea of God, 
of the universal ; we can have it only through union with 
him, for this idea is not a created one, but in and for 
itself : it is as with Spinoza, the one universal is God, 
and, so far as it is determined, it is the particular ; this 
particular we see only in the universal, as bodies in 
space.' ' The spirit perceives all in the infinite ; so little 
is this a confused perception of many particular things, 
that rather all particular perceptions are only participa- 
tions of the universal idea of the infinite : just as God 
receives not his being from finite creatures, but, on the 
contrary, all creatures only subsist through him.' 
' Thought is only in the union with God.' ' This rela- 
tion, this union of our spirit with the Word (verbe) of 
God, and of our will with his love, is, that we are made 



408 ANNOTATIONS. 

in the image of God, and in his likeness.' Hegel thus 
accentuates expressions of Malebranche, which are pro- 
bably more or less assonant to his own views. 



XIX. — Spinoza. 

ALL the authorities make a primate of Spinoza. 
Erdmann gives as complete and exhaustive an 
internal synthesis of the whole system as is well con- 
ceivable, and Ueberweg, who is quite overwhelming in 
his notice of the relative literature, complements it 
(Erdmann's statement) by an equally complete and ex- 
haustive external analysis. Hegel impregnates, most 
interestingly and instructively, the philosophy of Spinoza 
with his own. Erdmann's work here, in particular, 
however, is, as all but always, a miracle of labour, and of 
harnessed expression ; but what specially and peculiarly 
distinguishes him beyond all others, on this occasion, is 
that he has, probably, very fairly detected the secret of 
Spinoza. That secret is a particular mathematical image 
that underlies all the apparent philosophical generaliza- 
tions of Spinoza. I shall take the liberty of working out 
this image in my own way, and demonstrate how the main 
constituents of the system naturally rise out of it. 

Spinoza says, What is, is ; and that is extension and 
thought. These two are all that is, and besides these 
there is nought. But these two are one : they are attri- 
butes of the single substance — God, in whom, then, all 
individual things, and all individual ideas (modi of ex- 
tension those, of thought these) are comprehended and 
nave place. (Spinoza, indeed, does at first speak of in- 
finite attributes, but he is found in the end virtually to 
assume but two.) 

Now to Spinoza extension is as geometrical surface, 
taken quite generally. But geometrical surface contains 
impliciter all possible geometrical infiguration, with all 
its possible ideal consequences. With (geometrical) sur- 
face, extension, then, there is (geometrical) intelligence, 
thought. These two attributes meet in a substantial one 
(the whole), and involve an accidental many, the modi, 
the particulars of the contained infiguration. These 
modi, lastly, result the one from the other; or it is its 
own limitation by the rest that makes each. 

God, then, is as a vast and slumbering whale, whose 



SPINOZA. 409 

infinite surface is fretted into infinite shapes, which are 
the outward bodies that reflect themselves into the 
inward ideas. But, further now this infinite surface is 
not continuous, but a congeries of atomic movement. 
The atoms, the smallest geometrical figures, are various 
proportions of motion and rest, and they have their 
reflected or ideal counterparts within. But, besides 
simple figures, there are compound ones (a larger por- 
tion of surface being taken), and such is the body of 
man, to which, therefore, the correspondent inner ideas 
will constitute a mind. Mind and body, again, though 
correspondent, are independent ; each is its own world ; 
extension can only act on extension, idea on idea. 

This, now, is the Spinozistic ground-plan. The under- 
lying conception is a mathematical one, in which ex- 
tension and thought (Seyn and Denken, elvai and votiv^ 
reality and ideality) are essentially one. The example 
of mathematical figures, indeed, let us remark in 
passing, ought to realize the possibility of this scouted 
union — which is besides the omnipresent fact. Though 
obliged to introduce motion (assumed as deduced from 
extension), in order to obtain — what he found a neces- 
sity — individuals in mutual limitation, Spinoza's con- 
ception of causality is mathematical and not dynamical. 
His causes are pre-existent reasons, his effects the neces- 
sary logical consequences. The prime cause is simply to 
him the prime condition, extension namely, over which 
hangs, or under which floats, reflected from it, the con- 
sequences, the thoughts that are in it. Unbroken ex- 
tension, unbroken thought — that is God. Amongst the 
interdependent, interacting modi, which are the inter- 
secting colours of this heaving life, Man is, in body and 
in soul, a result of necessity like the rest. 

All specifications and particularizations, in truth, will 
be found to flow naturally from the few fundamental 
materials. Thus God, further, is the immanent, and not 
the transient, or transcendent, cause of all things. He is 
not personal either, or possessed of will, or of love to man ; 
nor free, unless in his own necessity, not acting, therefore, 
on design. As the cogitatio infinita, his thought is not an 
understanding even, but is an idea rather than ideas. Man, 
again, is partly immortal (in that his basis, namely, must 
be an original part and parcel of the divine substance — 
so much of the original surface), and partly mortal, for 
his personal and individual existence passes. His soul is 



410 ANNOTATIONS. 

but a knowledge of the states of Ms body ; he is a thing 
among things, that strives to self-preservation against 
the obstruction of the rest ; hence the joy of success, the 
grief of failure, hence fear and hope, hence love and hate, 
hence good and evil. Each, then, seeks his own advan- 
tage; this is his natural right, which falls together, 
therefore, with his natural might. But man, after all, 
is to man the greatest commodity, and the necessity of 
mutual intercourse leads to the resignation of all individual 
rights under power of the State. Wrong, now, is what 
the State forbids, right what it commands. Of States, 
too, the rights are identical with the mights, and treaties 
bind only as they profit. The State must not attempt 
what it cannot compel; there should be liberty of con- 
science, therefore, but with all outward subjection. The 
State, then, should be independent of the convictions of 
the individual citizens, and in itself good, whatever they 
be. Men are the same as they always have been, and 
always will be. The State is they who govern, nor can 
these do injustice, but they must stop where threats 
and promises cease to avail; a State's worst enemies 
are its own subjects. Political revolutions, nevertheless, 
can bring but ruin. Of governments, an aristocratic 
republic, with numerous corporations, is to Spinoza the 
best. The few, however, are independent of the State — » 
in intellectual freedom. This is acquired through the 
the acquisition of adequate ideas, on which follows, 
of necessity, and in ratio of the adequacy, intelligent 
submission to what is once for all so. Such submission, 
again, product of intelligence, is necessarily accompanied 
by the idea of God, by love to God ; and that is the 
blessedness which virtue not only offers as reward, but 
is, Eor the attainment of this consummation, then, 
the single duty is the emendatio intellectus, and in this 
alone is freedom. 

The philosophy of Spinoza, then, is, on the whole, a 
clumsy metaphor ; but it is not without thoughts. 
These Hegel certainly shows at the clearest, at the same 
time that he demonstrates as well the associated fatal 
defects. The objections of Ueberweg also are sharply con- 
ceived and distinctly stated. Both Hegel and Ueber- 
weg, however, understand Spinoza rather dynamically 
than mathematically. Hence, on the latter understand- 
ing, both their praise and their blame seem to fall wide. 
Into the views as well of Hegel as of Ueberweg I 



HOBBES. 411 

was prepared to enter at some length, but must, for 
the sake of space, forbear. In the statement above, 
extension, as figurable, implies ideas : Erdmann sees these 
as lent to, not in substance, but he names parallelism 
of modi later. Spinoza's Ethic has, doubtless, deeply 
influenced the progress of philosophy, especially since 
Jacobi recalled attention to it in Germany ; but after 
all, perhaps, his work of the greatest historical import- 
ance, is the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. The latter 
work has constituted the very arsenal of the Auf kid- 
rung, whether French or German. Voltaire's wit, and 
the erudition of the theological critics of the Fatherland, 
are alike indebted to it. 



XX.— Hobbes. 

THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679) was educated at 
Oxford, became tutor in the Cavendish family, 
and travelled on the Continent. As a man, he is said to 
nave suffered from a constitutional timidity. He was 
in personal relations with Charles n., Bacon, Descartes, 
Gassendi, etc. He published a multitude of works, of 
which the De Cive and the Leviathan are the chief. 
His principal views run thus : — Philosophy is knowledge 
obtained from a consideration of causes and effects. 
Eeligion, therefore, as knowledge obtained from revela- 
tion, is excluded from philosophy. Faith and reason 
must not be confounded. The Bible is not given to 
instruct us as regards nature and an earthly State, but 
to teach us the way to a kingdom that is not of this 
world. The origin of our knowledge lies in the impres- 
sions of sense, and these must depend on certain motions. 
Only the subjective state (idea) is known by us, and 
not its objective antecedent. The affection of sense 
continues after the impression has passed, constituting 
memory and imagination. Memory is the seat of ex- 
perience, and experience leads to expectation. Hence 
prudence. In behoof of memory, marks are invented, 
which become signs of communication or words. Words 
as signs become representative of many, and lead to 
generalization. To correlate sign and signification is to 
understand, but to correlate sign with sign is to calcu- 
late, to think, and to reason. A congruous correlation is 
truth ; an incongruous, falsehood. Accurate definition of 



412 ANNOTATIONS. 

words, then, is the first problem, the first philosophy; 
and hence the consideration which follows next, of 
Time and Space, Cause and Effect, Substance and Acci- 
dent, etc. Time and space are, to Hobbes, subjective. 
Cause and effect depend on motion, as also accidents, 
which are resultant affections of sense. Motion, then, 
is the main consideration ; and philosophy is secluded to 
the corporeal world as what alone exists. Spirits, in- 
corporeal substances, are but square circles. God is an 
object of philosophy only so far as some good men have 
ascribed to Him a corporeal nature. Philosophy, then, 
being confined to what is corporeal, considers, first, 
natural, and second, artificial bodies ; or is in the one 
case natural, and in the other civil, philosophy. Or 
philosophy may be more conveniently divided into 
First Philosophy (philosophia prima, as just noticed), 
Physics, Anthropology, and Politics. Physics include 
Mathematics, Astronomy, Physiology, Optics, etc. An- 
thropology considers cognition, and the invention of 
words, as already noticed, and then passes to man in his 
ethical capacity. Theory is only for Practice, and gene- 
ral utility is the single aim. The value of geometry 
even is its application to machinery. The practical 
capacity of man is the result of a reaction towards the 
attainment of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, which 
accompanies sensation generally. The degrees in this re- 
action yield the various desires. Deliberation on these 
leads to choice and will. The will, as last act of the 
movement, is not free, but a passive result of the in- 
fluences exerted by impressions, or by signs and words. 
The object of desire is good, of aversion evil. Bonum, 
jucundum, pulchrum, utile, mean the same thing, and 
are but varying relations of what is desirable. Bonum 
simpliciter did non potest. Self-preservation is the 
supreme good, death the supreme evil. To promote the 
one and prevent the other is the first law of nature. 
Men, then, at first, each being capable of inflicting this 
greatest evil (death) on the other, were pretty well 
equal, and all alike free to do what they would. Mutual 
fear was the universal condition, Bellum omnium contra 
omnes, or Homo homini lupus. But self-preservation 
must lead in the end to a treaty of peace, which brings 
with it various conditions. Each renounces freedom on 
the understanding that all renounce it. This compact 
is no result, then, of social instinct or benevolence, but 



JOHN LOCKE. 413 

of selfishness and fear. But this compact can be realized 
only through the subjection of all to one who will deter 
from injury. And in this way, we pass to Politics, or the 
State. The sovereign of a State is not its heart, but its 
soul. He is the State. The rest are but subjects. They 
are by express compact powerless, he is the Leviathan 
who swallows them all, the mortal god who sways all 
at his will, and is the source of peace and security. Now 
only have meum and tuum place, and right and wrong. 
Eight is what the sovereign commands ; wrong, what he 
forbids. Custom is an authority only in submission to 
him. Sovereignty can be exercised by a majority, by 
few, or by one ; and the State, accordingly, is a Demo- 
cracy, an Aristocracy, or a Monarchy. The first was the 
first in time. But the answer to the question, Which is 
the best ? is, the actually existent one. There must be 
no attempt to change ; obedience to the sovereign power 
must be absolute and unconditional ; else relapse to the 
state of nature were the inevitable result. War is a 
remnant of the state of nature. The natural rights 
of peoples and persons are the same. A State is a 
moral person. In respect of the sovereign, the sub- 
ject is without rights of any kind, and the former 
is under no control of law. The sovereign is alone 
the people. No error so dangerous as a belief in 
conscience that might lead to disobedience of the 
sovereign. Conscience must preserve the primal con- 
tract, and who commands is alone responsible. There 
is only one case where disobedience is legitimate ; self- 
preservation is the object of the State, and no one is 
obliged to commit suicide. Hobbes now proceeds at 
great length to refer to the Bible, and in such a way as 
recalls Antonio's • 

'Mark you this, Bassauio, 
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. 

This epitome from Erdmann will suggest, perhaps, the 
value of the original study. 



XXI. — John Locke. 

THERE is one point here in regard to which the differ- 
ence between the German and the English mind is 
placed in the most glaring relief. It is Locke's account of 



414 ANNOTATIONS. 

substance. This notion, because it is not derived from 
without, and yet really exists without, appears to the Ger- 
mans to be assumed as prescribed by the mind to the ex- 
ternal world, which latter then is, in that respect, subject 
to the mind, if in all others this latter (in experience) is 
subject to it. In Erdmann's language, ' It is a manifest 
self-contradiction to expect the mind to subject itself to a 
world already in subjection to laws which are its own 
(the mind's) product.' Schwegler, pp. 181, 182, expresses 
himself quite similarly. This contradiction does not 
seem to have occurred either to Locke himself or any 
other Englishman. The notion was an obscure one, they 
thought, but it undoubtedly corresponded to an outer 
fact, the knowledge of which, if obscurely acquired, was 
still actually acquired by inference from experience. 
Even to Hume the idea of the Germans seems never to 
have occurred : his way of it was simply that the mental 
notion was unsupported by any basis of fact. The con- 
ceptions of the Germans may not the less on that account 
be well founded. Erdmann adds to the account of 
Locke's theoretical, a very satisfactory statement of his 
moral, political, and religious contributions. Ueberweg, 
who otherwise correctly characterizes Hegel's difference 
from Locke, complains that he (Hegel) has ' taken up 
Locke's philosophy, as well as Kant's criticism, wrong ; ' 
but it will be difficult to establish either statement. 
Things may look strange to us in the light of Hegel, but 
that light is not necessarily on that account false. Per- 
haps no man will ever understand Kant as deeply as 
Hegel did, and I think that he perfectly understands the 
position of Locke, even while he objects to it. Hegel is 
perfectly just to the advance on the positions of Descartes, 
Malebranche, and Spinoza, which that of Locke involves. 
What Locke required in their regard he also completely 
approves. He even grants the correctness of the principle 
of experience, so far as it goes. It is absurd to him to 
say otherwise than that experience is the beginning in 
time. He only points out that the derivation of the ideas 
from experience is no explanation, no verification, either 
of them or of it. Locke's procedure, then, is to him a 
step to philosophy, but it is not yet philosophy. ' It is 
no matter whether the mind or whether experience be the 
source ; the question is, is this import in itself true ? ' 
1 Are these general ideas true in and for themselves, and 
whence come they, not only into my consciousness, into 



DAVID HUME. 415 

my mind, but into the things themselves ? ' The Hegelian 
itand-point is accurately indicated in these questions, 
nor less the defect of that of Locke. Ueberweg's objec- 
tions to Hegel here, then, I must hold to be unfounded. 

To Schwegler's list of English moralists we may add 
these : Henry More (1614-1687), Ralph Cudworth (1617- 
1688), Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), Bishop Butler 
(1692-1752), David Hartley (1704-1757), , Abraham 
Tucker (1705-74), Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), Richard 
Price (1723-1791), William Paley (1743-1805). Peter 
Brown was the Irish Bishop Brown. All the Germans 
omit any mention of Paley — one of the most masculine 
and truly English of thinkers and writers ! I have spent 
a considerable time in collecting materials for the cha- 
racterization of the English moralists, but find that to 
do justice to the theme would involve an enlargement of 
the Handbook beyond all legitimate limits. I pass, there- 
fore, at once to 



XXII. — David Hume. 

OF all the statements of Schwegler, I 'find this the 
most meagre and unsatisfactory. It is a mistake 
to represent the influence of Hume on German philosophy 
as limited to the relation of causality : it extends, on the 
contrary, to almost all other cardinal points of philosophy, 
as well practical as theoretical. Kant's very illustration 
about the Copernican notion is suggested by Hume, and 
it is this latter's distinction between matters of fact and 
relations of ideas that lies at the bottom of the whole 
German philosophical movement. I shall transcribe here 
a few of the salient expressions of Hegel. 

* The progress as regards thought is this : Berkeley 
lets all the ideas stand as they are ; in Hume, the anti- 
thesis of the sensuous and the universal element has 
cleared and more sharply expressed itself, sense being 
pronounced by him void of universality. Berkeley does 
not make the distinction as to whether there is necessary 
connexion in his sensations or not.' . . . ' Hume com- 
pleted Lockeanism by drawing attention to this, that on 
that stand-point experience is, indeed, the foundation of 
what is known, or perception contains all that happens ; 
but, nevertheless, universality and necessity are not con- 
tained in, nor given us, by experience. ' . . . 4 Custom 



416 ANNOTATIONS. 

obtains as well in our perception as in reference to law 
and morality. These, namely, rest on an instinct, a sub- 
jective, but very often deceptive, moral feeling.' . . . 
* We have the custom to regard one thing as just and 
moral : others have other customs. If, then, truth de- 
pends on experience, the element of universality, of 
objectivity, comes from elsewhere, or is not verified by 
experience. Hume has accordingly declared this species 
of universality and necessity to be only subjectively, not 
objectively, existing ; for custom is just such a subjective 
universality. This is an important and acute observation 
in regard to experience as the source of knowledge ; and 
it is from this point that the reflection of Kant begins.' 

To the representatives of the Scottish philosophy men- 
tioned by Schwegler, we may add Lord Karnes (1696- 
1782), Adam Smith (1723-1790), Adam Ferguson (1724- 
1816), Thomas Brown (1778-1820), and Sir William 
Hamilton (1788-1856). Professor Ferrier belongs to an 
era of thought that was inaugurated by Thomas Carlyle. 
On all these men, I was also prepared to speak at large ; 
bat the limits of the book preclude justice either to them 
or to me. Short, but excellent articles under the name 
of each will be found in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and 
others. A word on Sir W. Hamilton will be found in the 
note on Jacobi. Erdmann, in his first edition, was 
hardly satisfactory on the Scottish school, and such a 
writer as he cannot afford to be unsatisfactory anywhere ; 
for the danger is that he may be doubted even when at 
his best. In the second edition of the Qrundriss much 
of this has been amended, though a Scot might, perhaps, 
still wish more space for the Scots. Schwegler reckons 
Hutcheson among the English moralists : he is generally 
put at the head of the Scottish school. He is a great 
writer, and does more than he gets credit for. To 
mention one example, the manner in which Kant's best 
distinctions in regard to taste are anticipated by him is 
very striking. Some of Schwegler 's happiest feats of 
expression will be found in his brief paragraphs on the 
French Illumination. 

XXIIL— Leibnitz. 

SCHWEGLER'S statement here is a very excellent 
one. Erdmann's is fuller and perfectly satisfactory. 
The student who knows both may justly consider him- 



BERKELEY. 417 

self instruit. With respect to the Calculus, we may ex- 
tract from Ueberweg that Newton, inventing in 1665, 
published in 1687, while Leibnitz, inventing in 1675, 
published in 1684, but that the invention of the latter is 
in many respects preferable. Leibnitz's verdict on the 
findings of Locke, Ueberweg states thus : — ' In Locke 
certain special truths are not badly expounded ; but on 
the main point he has wandered far from correctness, 
and he has not attained to a knowledge of the nature of 
spirit or of truth. Had he duly weighed the difference 
between necessary truths, or those dependent on demon- 
stration, and those to which we reach in a certain degree 
by means of induction, he would have perceived that 
necessary truths are capable of proof only through 
principles implanted in the mind itself, the so-called in- 
nate ideas, because the senses inform us indeed of what 
happens, but not of what necessarily happens. He has 
not observed, likewise, that the ideas of the beent, of 
substance, of identity, of the true and the good, are in- 
nate in the mind, because the mind itself is innate to 
itself, or comprehends all these in itself. Nihil est in 
intellectu, quod nonfuerit in sensu, ntsi ipse intellectus.' 
The student of philosophy will find helps to Hegel in 
the Monads, and Best of all Possible Worlds, of Leibnitz. 
This world is not to Hegel the product of an arbitrary 
fancy, a subjective conceit, a momentary caprice ; it is 
to him a necessary result of reason, and, taken in its 
entirety, the whole, and the only possible result, of reason. 
It does not follow from that, however, that the per- 
sonality of God is an untenable conception : the infinite, 
the universal monad, is as necessary as the finite and 
particular. The same student will find much that is said 
under Wolff useful, which want of space forbids me to 
signalize. 



s 



XXIV.— Berkeley. 

CHWEGLER is very short on Berkeley, but, to my 
mind, he is perfectly accurate. Even when he says 
'only spirits exist,' he is surely not in accurate. For 
spirits alone have life ; ideas have no life of their own, 
they are only for spirits. At p. 193, however, Schwegler 
had already said, ■ There are only spirits (souls), and the 
thoughts of spirits (ideas).' Using a certain double- 
entendre, Berkeley sought to claim for his doctrine the 
2d 



418 ANNOTATIONS. 

support of vulgar opinion and of what is called common 
sense. Those of his followers, therefore, who accept this 
double-entendre, may fastidiously demur to the correctness 
of Schwegler's statement of Berkeley, because, though 
he expressly admits that Berkeley's theory does not, for 
Berkeley himself, ' deny to objects a reality independent 
of us,' he yet uses in its regard such phrases as * a material 
external world does not exist/ 'complete denial of matter,' 
etc. Schwegler has as much right, however, to assert 
that Berkeley denies, as they to assert that Berkeley 
affirms, matter. Nay, Schwegler has more right, and, 
properly speaking, his opponents have, on their side, no 
right at all ; for the former uses the word matter in the 
sense of noumenal matter — a sense attached to it by man- 
kind generally, while the latter use the same word in the 
sense of phenomenal matter — a sense attached to it only 
by themselves. The little check to free discussion offered 
by the gratuitous interposition of this double-entendre, 
then, causes but a jolt. At the same time, it is to be 
admitted, that it may be said, that what the vulgar 
believe in, is only 'phenomenal matter. This, however, 
is only a may be said, and concerns a subject that cannot 
be introduced into any philosophical arena — the vulgar, 
namely. On that head each philosopher has his own 
equal warrant to represent the vulgar, while none but 
Berkeleian philosophers — and only some of these — attach 
to it any such belief (as that in a phenomenal matter), a 
belief that will be denied to be natural, we may permit 
ourselves to say, by all but all readers. The principle of 
Berkeley, indeed, is so simple and intelligible, that but 
few readers can have any difficulty in inspecting the 
general position for themselves. It was presented in a 
word or two when speaking of subjective gorgonization at 
page 391 : ' the object can only be known in me, in the 
subject, and therefore it is subjective, and, if subjective, 
ideal.' The moment we are made to perceive, in fact, 
that what we know of an external world is sensations, 
and that sensations are necessarily within, we are made 
possessors also of the whole of what is current as Berke- 
leianism. What you perceive, say the Berkeleians de 
rigueur, is a phenomenal object, and you have no 
right to infer a noumenal one. That essentially amounts 
to the mentioned gorgonization. I can only perceive an 
outer object by perceiving it : am I to suppose an outer 
object for ever denied me, then, by the very medium and 



BERKELEY. 419 

means by which alone it can be given me ? That I per- 
ceive = that I do not perceive ! Berkeley is perfectly 
aware of the simplicity of his own position, and, as Reid 
points out (Works, p. 283), apologizes for his own pro- 
lixity : ' to what purpose is it to dilate upon that which 
may be demonstrated, with the utmost evidence, in a line 
or two, to any one who is capable of the least reflection V 
We can see, then, that the reply of Hamilton, and the 
whole school of natural realism, was very natural. 
Given a mind, and given an outer object, the latter can 
be known to the former only through perception ; but 
the mediation which alone effects the knowledge cannot 
also exclude it : I am such that I do perceive a real, 
outer, independent object. We may suppose this also to 
be said by Hamilton, quite irrespective of the ingenious 
theory of perception by which he supported it. Indeed 
we have only for the nonce to identify ourselves with 
this position of Hamilton, and to feel as he felt there, to 
sympathize even with his cry about the veracity of con- 
sciousness. Hegel's reply to Berkeley (See Secret of 
Hegel, vol. i. p. 425, and vol. ii. p. 165) is quite beside 
the reply of Hamilton, and insists only on the ignavia, 
the idleness, of the position maintained. Without is 
within, says Berkeley. Let it be so, says Hegel, and 
philosophy has still to begin. The same things that were 
called without or noumenal are now called within or 
'phenomenal, but, call them as you may, it is their syste- 
matic explanation that is wanted. Such systematic expla- 
nation, embracing man and the entire round of his ex- 
periences, sensuous, intellectual, moral, religious, aesthetic, 
political, etc., is alone philosophy, and to that no repe- 
tition of without is within, or matter is phenomenal, will 
ever prove adequate. Hegel, indeed, returns a score of 
times to the utter inefficiency of subjective idealism ; 
and that is subjective idealism which converts the ex- 
ternal world into an experience within the subject alone. 
The Germans, it is true, since Kant, call Berkeleianism 
the dogmatic idealism, in allusion to its generally asser- 
toric procedure in the transference, as Schwegler says 
(p. 212), of all reality to conception (mental experience). 
That the idealism of Kant himself was called the critical 
or the transcendental idealism depends on this, that it 
was the result of a critical inquiry into our faculties, 
which inquiry supposed itself to demonstrate in experi- 
ence as such the presence of what it called a transcen* 



420 ANNOTATION'S. 

dental element — an element, that is, that lay in us but 
still came to us in experience. The idealism of Fichte 
again, that reduced all to, or deduced all from, the ego 
was, par excellence, the subjective idealism. Then Schel- 
ling, who gave to the object an equal basis beside the 
subject, but still under an idealistic point of view, is 
said to have given rise to the objective idealism ; while 
Hegel, lastly, because he subordinated all to thought 
alone, is styled the founder of the absolute idealism. 
Even in England, the stand-point of Berkeley has for 
some time been replaced by what is perhaps a simpler 
one. That is contained in the works of Carlyle and 
Emerson ; and amounts to this, that relatively there is 
an external world, but not absolutely; still that this 
external world is not given to me from moment to 
moment by God himself, but that He, from the first, 
has so created me that such a world, from my own very 
nature, hangs ever before me. In a religious sense, it is 
to be said that this, and the general position of Ber- 
keleian or English idealism, has, quite apart from the 
critique of Hegel, a value all its own. In regard to all 
the great spiritual interests, as the existence of God, the 
freedom of the will, and the immortality of the soul, it is 
of immense consequence to get quit of matter (of course 
as ordinarily understood), and with it of materialism. We 
may say, indeed, that in the present disintegration of 
religion around us, the idealism of Berkeley, of Car- 
lyle, and of Emerson, has been to many a man the 
focus of a creed, of a fervent and sincere and influen- 
tial faith. It is this that makes Berkeley and idealism 
in general so interesting now. Berkeley, indeed, is, in 
every point of view, a grand and great historical figure. 
Grand and great in himself — one of the purest and most 
beautiful souls that ever lived — he is grand and great 
also in his consequences. Hamann — an authority of 
weight — declares that * without Berkeley there had 
been no Hume, as without Hume no Kant ; * and this 
is partly the truth. To the impulse of Berkeley 
partly, then, it is that we owe German philosophy ! 
And great as is this service, it is to the majority of 
English and American thinkers much less great than 
that which they owe to. Berkeley himself, either directly 
or indirectly (through Carlyle and Emerson) — especially 
in the religious reference already alluded to. When 
we add to these considerations, that also of Berkeley's 



BERKELEY. 421 

mastery of expression, and of his general fascination as 
a writer, it is impossible to think of him to whom Pope 
attributes 'every virtue under heaven/ without that 
veneration with which the ancients regarded their Plato, 
their Democritus, and their Eleatic Parmenides, of 
which last, perhaps, the sublimity, purity, and earnest- 
ness of character approach nearest to those of the 
character of Berkeley. It is no wonder, then, that 
interest has partially revived of late in the philosophy 
of Berkeley, and that we look forward with so much 
expectation to that complete edition of his works which 
has so long occupied the attention of the eminently- 
competent Professor Fraser. 1 In the same connection 
we may allude to the many Berkeleian elements that 
obtain in the writings of Professor Ferrier. 

Having omitted all notice of Bishop Berkeley in the 
Secret of Hegel, I felt that I could do no less than repair 
that omission here, in a work which, bearing so directly 
on German philosophy, owed so much of its materials to 
him. I may add, too, that, apart even from the in- 
fluence of his earlier writings, there attaches now, in 
the present situation of the study of the history of philo- 
sophy, a peculiar value to his expressions relative to the 
philosophies of the ancients in what may be called his 
latest work, Siris. Here Berkeley displays such an 
extensive and correct acquaintance with the philosophy 
of the Greeks as must prove surprising to every one who 
has had his attention recalled of late to the same sub- 
ject. To Mr. Grote we may point out, for instance, that 
he says (section 309), 'To understand and to be, are, 
according to Parmenides, the same thing ; ' and (section 
1 320), ' According to Anaxagoras, there was a confused 
mass of all things in one chaos, but mind supervening, 
iweXdwp, distinguished and divided them ;' and to Mr. 
Lewes, as in reference to philosophy, that he opines (sec- 
tion 350) that ' He who hath not much meditated upon 
God, the human mind and the summum honwriy may 
possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most in- 
dubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman.' 
Nay, even with a reference to later philosophy, there are 
expressions in this work which equally surprise. Berke- 
ley says there of space, for example (section 318), 'If 
we consider that it is no intellectual notion, nor yet per- 

1 This very perfect edition we now possess, and the Editor has more 
than satisfied in it every expectation. 



422 ANNOTATIONS. 

ceived by any of our senses ; ' and this is, virtually, all 
that, on the same subject, was afterwards said by Kant. 
Hegel himself is not unrepresented here, as sections 
359-365 will testify. There the English Bishop gives 
some hints towards that speculative founding or ground- 
ing of the doctrine of the Trinity on which the German 
Professor laid afterwards so much stress. In all these 
references Berkeley will be found peculiarly admirable 
for the spirit of candour and love which he manifests. 
For systems, flippantly characterized nowadays as Pan- 
theistic or Atheistic, for example, he grudges not, in 
the sweetness of his own simple, sincere nature, to vin- 
dicate Theism. Altogether, one gets to admire Berkeley 
almost more here than elsewhere. The learning, the 
candour, and the depth of reflection, are all alike strik- 
ing. As compared with Hume, in especial, it is here that 
Berkeley is superior ; and that not only with reference 
to the learning, but with reference to the spirit of faith 
and gravity, as opposed to the spirit of doubt and levity. 
The most valuable ingredient in Berkeley is, after all, 
that he is a Christian. 

XXV.— Kant. 

BY him who compares the translation with the 
original, it will be found that something has 
been done in this section (by parentheses or slight 
modifications) as well to provide a correct statement 
of the views of Kant, as to secure the understanding 
of them on the part of the student. Much explanatory 
illustration does not seem called for, then ; but, carefully 
reading the text, I shall set down here such remarks 
as may naturally suggest themselves. The modifications 
alluded to will be found chiefly on pages 210, 211, 213, 
218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, and concern what 
I have spoken of as Kant's theory of perception. Much 
light into this theory is extended by simply substituting 
perception for cognition, the word which is generally used 
by others in translating Kant in this reference. A con- 
siderable amount of light lies., too, in the substitution of 
perception for intuition. The sensations of the various 
special senses, received into the universal a priori forms 
of space and time, are reduced into perceptive objects, 
connected together in a synthesis of experience, by the 
categories. These are the broad outlines of the theory 



KANT. 423 

named ; but Kant goes into the construction or realiza- 
tion of this theory with great minuteness. This realization 
or construction is scarcely represented in the statement 
of Schwegler, and constitutes that deduction of the cate- 
gories (and deduction does not mean derivation but justi- 
fication — a justifying exposition or construction), which 
is at once the central and the most difficult portion of 
the work of Kant. It is here that we have the various 
syntheses of imagination, apperception, etc. It is this 
deduction, in fact, which puts meaning into that scheme 
of categories which, as it stands in Schwegler, is hardly 
either iDtelligible or credible. Kant has often been 
charged with mere empiricism in deriving his categories 
from formal logic ; but the objectors have mostly ignored 
that a priori and demonstrated nature of formal logic on 
which Kant always insists so much, and to which I 
allude in a parenthetic addition on page 221. Page 215, 
in the series of the great works of Kant, I shall be found 
to have substituted the Kritik of Judgment for the work 
on Religion within the bounds of Pure Reason, Page 217, 
Schwegler says that the Kritik of Pure Reason is the 
inventarium of all our possessions through pure reason. 
This is an error, as I have pointed out elsewhere, and 
I have substituted for inventarium the word ground-plan. 
Page 225, Kant speaks of the necessity of a 'whole or 
nature of things ;' this strikes the key-note of the great 
difference between the Germans and the Positivists in 
their modes of viewing existence. The former demand 
an intelligible necessary context or synthesis of things ; 
the latter admit only an unintelligible conjunction of 
bare consequents and bare antecedents that is co-exten- 
sive with experience alone. On pages 212 and 216, one 
gets a clear glimpse of the difference between the pro- 
cedures of Kant and criticism, and those of Hume and 
scepticism. Kant would honestly investigate and tabu- 
late the source, nature, and extent of all those aporias, 
which Hume only summons up as spectres for the con- 
fusion of faith. Kant's Copernican allusion was probably 
suggested by a passage that occurs in the last paragraph 
but two of the first section of Hume's Enquiry concerning 
Human Understanding, It is of great importance that 
the reader should not misunderstand the state of Kant's 
conviction in regard to the moral postulates, that is, 
to the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, 
and the freedom of the will. Coleridge, it is known, 



424 ANNOTATIONS. 

doubted Kant's sincerity in their regard. Very un- 
fortunately for himself, however, for such a doubt 
is a conviction of ignorance. The moral scheme of 
Kant is by far the purest that any philosopher has 
ever broached. In an act of moral volition, he will 
have no pathological element whatever present ; our 
rational will shall be absolutely free and autonomous, 
and obey no law but its own. Now, if this position 
be wholly based on one of the postulates, so rigorous 
is it, that it finds, though in a peculiar indirect manner, 
the other two to tend against it. Let the existence of 
God be once for all absolutely certain, let the immor- 
tality of the soul be once for all absolutely certain, then 
fear and hope — pathological elements — cannot be pre- 
vented from intruding into moral motive, and the purity 
of the categorical imperative is vitiated. The immor- 
tality of the soul and the existence of God are indeed 
for Kant absolutely necessary consequences of our moral 
constitution itself, still it is not without satisfaction 
that he finds our cognitive faculty, as he thinks, wholly 
incompetent to prove these principles. We cannot prove 
these principles, he says, but neither can the enemy 
disprove them ; and meantime they have morally pre- 
cisely that support and no more which coheres with 
their essential interests. Were this support greater, 
were they, once for all, certainties of knowledge, then 
the moral law, which is either categorical or naught, 
were for ever paralysed. Kant positively hails with 
satisfaction, then, as a special and express provision of 
God himself, this theoretical uncertainty of the postu- 
lates that compels us to take refuge in the practical 
world, in the world of morals. Besides the great bene- 
fit — the freedom of the moral law — he sees in this 
arrangement a discipline also which is to secure us on 
one side from irreligious self-abandonment, and on the 
other from superstitious fanaticism. It is pleasant 
to perceive, however, the warm affection that \ant has 
at heart for the argument from design ; he cannot help 
availing himself, so far as he can, of the support it 
yields ; and it is important to know that it is not 
after all the moral, but the intellectual, interest that 
compels him to doubt it. To Kant, namely, all that 
we know is from within — subjective sensational states 
(due certainly to external antecedents which, neverthe- 
less, are absolutely unknown) realized into an objective 



KANT. 425 

system of experience by subjective intellectual faculties 
— evidently, then, in such a world there is no room for 
the action on it of a God from without. Could we know 
the external world, then, if God has made it according 
to design and according to beauty, we should be able to 
know both of these also; but internal sensations syn- 
thesized by internal intellections can give no knowledge 
of outer things themselves, let alone their design and 
beauty. Plainly, then, in these respects, Kant must, 
in regard of his theoretical world, whatever was the 
situation of his moral one, have found himself peculiarly 
hampered. Hence the Kritik of Judgment. It was 
precisely on this Kantian condition of knowledge that 
Hegel broke in with his very fiercest wrath. What ! the 
truth is never possible for us, we must know but 
delusions and appearances only ; and of what we do 
know, we are only to say we know what has received 
filling from impressions of sense ? Great is Hegel's 
scorn here, and very grim his laugh at the inability of 
poor Kant to believe in the substantiality of the ego, 
because it was not a thing, a sensuous thing. It is at 
page 227 that Schwegler reports on this matter. There 
we see that the ego was to Kant nothing but the simple 
reflection 'I am/ or 'I think;' 'the "I think," ' we 
hear, ' is neither perception nor notion, but a mere con- 
sciousness, etc. . . . falsely converted into a thing.' 
What, in this reference, Hegel blew into annihilation 
with a breath of his scorn, Coleridge fell down before 
and worshipped. Kant's ' I think/ which was neither 
perception nor notion, nothing but a bare consciousness, 
was to Coleridge the infinite / Am, in whom we live, 
move, and have our being ! A great portion of the 
Logic of Hegel is taken up with a criticism of the 
elements of Kant, and never was there a criticism more 
unsparing or more absolutely exhaustive. The para- 
logisms that are to subvert the ego, the cosmological 
antinomies, the objections to the arguments for the 
existence of God, are all subjected by Hegel to a sifting, 
to a closeness of scrutiny never before paralleled, and 
with satisfactory results for the spiritualist on all 
hands. I may allude also to Hegel's statement of Kant 
in the Encyclopaedia as perhaps the most powerful and 
successful analytic objective synthesis at present in 
existence. At page 239, we find Kant's view of the 
Trinity, a very different one from that of Hegel, to 



426 ANNO TA TIONS. 

whom that doctrine was the essential basis of religion. 
At page 246, we have Kant's approaches to, but failure 
fairly to seize, the notion of immanent adaptation, or of 
that intuitive understanding which would recognise in 
the universal the particular. The phrase intuitive under- 
standing conveyed to Hegel that conception of the all of 
things according to which thought and perception were 
one — thought not only was in itself (the universal, the 
noumenon), but in realization also (the particular, the 
phenomenon). 



XXVI. — Jacobi. 

IN the very clear exposition here, room for explanation 
there is none. It is a pleasure to see such an 
authority as Jacobi able to do full justice to the Kantian 
transformation of the ideas of theoretical, into the postu- 
lates of practical, reason. In reading this section, the 
competent student cannot fail to be impressed by a 
sense of how much Sir William Hamilton owes to Jacobi, 
especially as regards the intuition of belief. Jacobi is 
an admirable stylist ; so it is that stylist hung on stylist, 
and that Hamilton drew so much of his knowledge of 
the Germans from this source. It must be matter of 
regret, indeed, that such a trenchant subjective intellect 
as Hamilton's allowed itself, in its own natural im- 
patience and impetuosity, to know of the great masters 
of German speculation only, for the most part, what exote- 
ric writers told him. Hence the undigested fragments 
which, now no honour to him, might through labour have 
been replaced by what would have given stimulus and 
support to thousands. Hamilton's ' Conditioned ' is an 
unfortunate and perverted echo from the same influences. 
Nor do I think that either his additions to logic or 
his doctrine of common sense will sustain inquiry. His 
psychology, however, is not without genuine materials. 
He is, perhaps, the only Scottish psychologist of any 
veritable historical value since Brown. But, generally, 
let Hamilton's objective product be what it may, we 
must not forget his great and real subjective ability. 
No man that ever lived could draw a distinction to 
a sharper edge than Hamilton could ; he has the style 
of genius, the temperament of genius, and, with all his 
faults, he is, perhaps, a bigger man in the field of mental 



FICHTE. 427 

philosophy than any man that has followed him in Great 
Britain (though Ferrier is finer perhaps). It is to be 
borne in mind, too, that the above criticism concerns 
only what may be called Hamilton's ultimate result as 
an original philosopher, and that there is no intention to 
undervalue his writings in other respects. These, indeed, 
are always brilliant, forcible, clear, and, where informa- 
tion is concerned, both entertaining and instructive. 



XXVH.— Fichte. 

THE student, it may be, will find greater difficulty 
here than elsewhere in Schwegler. The unsubstan- 
tially, the airiness of the deduction in general, and of 
what concerns contraposition in particular, will probably 
be found the source of this. On the first head, indeed, 
it is impossible not to wonder, as Kant did, at the busy, 
eager, never-doubting Fichte, who will develop the world 
from a process, so to speak, of in and in. Only when he 
gets to a wholly concrete sphere is it that he becomes at 
all satisfactory. Then his method becomes simply a form 
that lays out the (concrete) matter clearly before us. 
This is seen in the practical sphere, and is there really 
valuable. As regards contraposition, the key-note has 
been already struck when it was said, that, given a posi- 
tive, its negative counterpart is also given, as cold in 
reference to heat, etc. The quotation from Professor 
Ferrier, already given (p. 360), 'Whatever epithet or 
predicate is applied to one of the terms of the antithesis, 
the counter-predicate must be applied to the other term,' 
has this reference. Schwegler's language is, ' Whatever 
belongs to the ego, the counterpart of that must, by 
virtue of simple contraposition, belong to the non-ego ; ' 
and again, • As many parts of reality as the ego deter- 
mines in itself, so many parts of negation does it de- 
termine in the non-ego, and conversely.' I fancy that 
the historical value of the method of Fichte will shrink, 
in the end, to its influence on Hegel. Without the 
method of the Wissenschaftslehre, there never would have 
been the method of the Logic. When it is said, on p. 260, 
that Kant took his categories from experience, I have 
added 'in a manner,' referring to the demonstrated and 
a priori nature of formal logic as insisted on by Kant, and 
already alluded to. What is said (p. 261) about the 



£28 ANNOTATIONS. 

universal ego, as substituted in the deduction for the 
empirical ego, is not satisfactory. Let us generalize as 
much as we please, we still know no ego but the empiri- 
cal ego, and can refer to none other. That, in the 
fragment of the first sonnet, for the sake of uniformity, 
I have substituted the second person for the first, will 
probably not be taken ill. 



XXVIIL— Herbart 

THERE is certainly a great deal in this section that is 
striking and ingenious, but in view of the fantastic 
and incredible nature of much else, probably our con- 
clusion will be the same as that of Schwegler. The sup- 
position of these ' reals' is the destruction of philosophy. 
How can unity, philosophy, be possible if the basis of all 
be an underived, heterogeneous, and really unknown 
many ? Philosophy is possible only on the supposition 
of a single principle that possesses within itself the 
capability of transition into all existent variety and 
varieties. Then consider the absurdity of such questions 
as ' A body is coloured, but not without light ; how then 
about this quality in the dark ?' There is a look of depth 
here that may take with some, but I know no parallel to 
such a question unless the household mystery of, "Where 
was Adam when the light went out ? To suppose some- 
thing present when its very constituent conditions are 
absent, is a return to the noumenon that is without a 
quality. Erdmann is incisively clear on Herbart, and 
Ueberweg extends us a very satisfactory relative breadth. 



XXIX.— Schelling. 

THERE is little to be said here, and any difficulty 
occurs only in the latest paragraphs. One likes 
the genial glances of Schelling, but one dislikes his 
incessant changes. A human being leaping in such a 
variety of directions, according to the latest goad, is not 
an edifying spectacle. His best contributions are pro-, 
bably those in analogy with Bohm ; his worst, where he 
conceals what he misunderstood in Hegel in vast, vague, 
mythological forms that have no merit but such as an 
Ossian might claim. The exposition of these last, how- 
ever, is the worst in the book ; but for that Schwegler is 



HEGEL. 429 

not to blame. Schelling's works in question had not 
reached complete publication before the untimely death 
of Schwegler. The note, p. 311, refers to an unsatis- 
factory sentence, which runs thus in the original (p. 222) : 
4 Dieses dritte nun, das, wie — A den ersten so den hochsten 
Anspruch daraufhat, das Seiende zu sein, ivird am passend- 
sten mit dent Worte Geist bezeichnet .' As pointed, the 
first nominative has no verb ; a comma after — A (as in 
the translation) makes the grammar easy, but the sense 
difficult. To place the das before the — A would make 
the sense no better. It would hardly yield complete 
satisfaction even to convert the minus into a plus, or, 
indeed, to prefix both. The eighth German edition with- 
draws the comma after das, 

XXX.— Hegel 

THE competent reader, who keeps the original before 
him, will probably feel pleased with any little turn or 
modification which he may find in the translation of this 
section. In in. 2. (b.) (2), for example, he will perceive 
that, to make the text consistent and intelligible, I was 
obliged to refer to Hegel himself. When it is considered 
that the life and works of Hegel present themselves, as they 
appear on the library shelves, in no less than twenty -two 
good-sized volumes, it will be readily understood that 
Schwegler's twenty- eight pages can do but scant justice to 
so large an amount of matter. Accordingly they can be 
regarded occasionally as only extended contents. (This is 
more especially the case, perhaps, with what we have under 
the ■ absolute spirit.') Nevertheless, I regard this state- 
ment of Schwegler's as, on the whole, not unsuccessful 
in giving a glimpse as well of the matter as the form of 
HegeL The * logic,' though shortened or fore-shortened 
into what, I fear, must seem to the unacquainted reader 
only caricature, is really in itself, however inadequate as 
a complete exposition, a spirited sketch. The four pages 
on 'the objective spirit' again, though representative of 
two volumes, ■ the philosophy of right,' and ' the philo- 
sophy of history' (the latter need hardly be meotioned, 
however), I positively like, and expect more good from, 
whether as regards Hegel or as regards the public, than 
from all the rest. The little hint of Schwegler's against 
this part of the philosophy of Hegel as a ' State-philo- 
Bophy,' I would not have the reader to take altogether 



430 ANNOTATIONS. 

an pied de la lettre. By far the best lesson the Germans 
can give us lies in the ethical works of Kant, and the 
ethical and political ones of Hegel. It is these, however 
(with the religious), that, in the case of Kegel, have 
excited the shrieks of the German radicals and free- 
thinkers. 

What disheartens the student of Hegel is, firstly, the 
impossibility of reading in Hegel ; and, secondly, the 
difficulty of attaining, in his regard, to a general conclu- 
sion. The curious peculiarity, too, on the first head, is 
that, open where we may in Hegel, we find him always 
engaged in saying pretty well the same thing. Open 
where we may, in short, it is always the dialectic we 
encounter, and that dialectic is always the same, what- 
ever element it may be in act to transform. Nay, there 
is also a peculiar dialect to which this dialectic has led, 
and which renders it impossible for Hegel to escape into 
general and current speech, even when employed on 
matters that are not esoteric. This is to be seen even in the 
* philosophy of history,' which, of all the representations 
of Hegel, is perhaps the easiest. That perpetual abstract 
alone, as, for instance, Rome's abstracte Herrschaft, must 
have irritated most readers. Not only that, however, 
but Hegel seems to have brought from very nature a 
tendency to grubeln, to grub and grope and burrow like 
a mole in the ground. We see this in the earliest papers 
we possess from him ; in those, for example, that relate 
to his theological studies when a tutor in Switzerland. 
Specimens of these we have in the life by Rosenkranz, 
and they seem scarcely human ; they seem constructed 
for an understanding that moves only in the interior. 
Hegel, at his ripest and best, has attained to a broad 
homely Suabian Doric, that, racy with hits, is not un- 
kindly, or that, 'stubborned with iron,' can annihilate 
roughly with a laugh — to a speech, then, at once force- 
ful, plain, and clear ; but he was not, probably, by gift 
of nature a stylist. Hodden-grey at his finest, there was 
a tendency in him — early in life an effort even — to get 
muffled and uncouth, and lost from sight in the hopelessly 
baroque. Something of this we see at page 320, in the 
quotation from the Phenomenology. The figures in which 
Hegel would there find air for himself are big and 
mouthing and confused ; and he makes no scruple to 
stride a cross metaphor. Let it have been as it may, 
however, with the style or natural speech, of Hegel, the* 



HEGEL. 431 

impossibility of reading in him is due mainly to his 
dialectic and consequent dialect. What is this dialectic, 
then, we naturally ask, on which the whole problem 
hinges ? Let us but know that, and we shall have a key 
to the dialect, and thence to the whole. The usual 
explanation of this dialectic is what we find in Schwegler, 
as in reference to the ' absolute method' 'that advances 
from notion to notion through negation,' etc. (see pp. 317, 
323, 324). Now, as discussed elsewhere, I hold this and 
all such explanations to be external merely, and to miss 
the main point. That point is the notion, the concrete 
notion, and in its derivation from Kant ; and that is the 
'secret of Hegel.' Hegel, undoubtedly, was not without 
debts to Schilling; but I know not that it was 'from 
reflection on the one-sidedness of Schelling that the 
Hegelian philosophy arose.' Schelling's 'nature,' and 
his 'absolute,' and his reference to Bohm, did much, it is 
true, for Hegel, but the form of Fichte, and certainly the 
matter of Kant did much more. In short, it comes to 
this, inspired by their example, Hegel sought the one idealistic 
principle to which he might reduce all. To be in earnest 
with idealism, Hegel said to himself, is to find all things 
whatever but forms of thought. But how is that possible 
without a standard — without a form of thought, that, 
in application to things, will reduce them to itself? 
What, in fact, is thought — what is its ultimate, its prin- 
ciple, its radical? These questions led to the result 
that what was peculiar to thought, what characterized 
the function of thought, what constituted the special 
nerve of thought, was a triple nisus, the movement of 
which corresponded in its successive steps or moments 
to what is named in logic simple apprehension, judgment, 
and reason. Simple apprehension, judgment, and reason, 
do indeed constitute chapters in a book, but they collapse 
in man into a single force, faculty, or virtue, that has 
these three sides. That is the ultimate pulse of thought 
— that is the ultimate virtue into which man himself 
retracts. Let me but be able then, thought Hegel, to 
apply this standard to all things in such manner as 
shall demonstrate its presence in them, as shall demon- 
strate it to be their nerve also, as shall reduce all things 
into its identity, and I shall have accomplished the one 
universal problem. All things shall then be demon- 
stratively resolved into thought, and idealism — absolute 
idealism — definitively established. This is the secret of 



432 ANNOTATIONS. 

Hegel, and all the details of the execution, if with effort, 
still follow of themselves. The first moment of the 
notion is simple apprehension, identity, the universal, — 
that the beginning of the system, then, as in evolution, 
should be pure being, cannot surprise. Those who object 
to the beginning with being, indeed, only expose their 
ignorance of the principle of Hegel. That principle is the 
radical, the ultimate nerve, the pulse of actual living 
thought, and not being and nothing, nor any mere abstract 
formula about synthesis, antithesis, position, negation, etc. 
These names, indeed, are not inapplicable to the concrete 
notion, but they are not that notion, nor can they be 
substituted for it. 1 Then it shall not be enough to 
demonstrate all things to be made on the model of the 
notion, but its own inherent triple nisus shall constitute 
the movement also ; the means, that is, of transition 
between things, or of transformation of one thing into 
another. And thus the universe shall be presented as 
but a vast system of thought, self -referent to the unity 
of a single living pulse. This system is, and is eternal as 
it is. Still under explanation all becomes fluent, and 
refers itself genetically to the single pulse. That pulse, 
in its own movement, is adequate to its own internal 
realization, which complete, it is only a necessary result 
of the same pulse that it should sunder into an external 
realization, and so on. (The phenomenon or shadow of 
the noumenon is as necessary as the shadow of light.) 
This, then, is the secret of Hegel's dialectic. Let us 
come upon it wherever we may, we shall find that the 
element concerned, under subjection (as is supposed) to 
the process of pure original thought, passes from the 
roller of simple apprehension to that of judgment, whence 
reason receiving it returns it in a new form, or as a new 
element, to sinrple apprehension again. Or an element 
presents itself always at first in its universality or abs- 
tract identity, passes into its particularity or abstract dif- 
ference, and issues in its singularity or concrete wholeness ; 
just as to Hegel a whole act of thought consists of an act of 
simple apprehension on an object, followed by another of 
judgment, and that finally by a third of reason. The 

i The truth is, at the same time, that it was substituted for them ; 
Hegel, that is, converted Fichte's artificial abstract receipt for an 
a priori deduction into what he conceived the actual pulse of actual 
living thought, to the development, as he also conceived or repre- 
sented, — but only with enormous labour and ingenuity of construc- 
tion,— of the ultimate or essential system of the universe. 



HEGEL. 433 

dialectic, then, being but the means that mediates the 
transition or transformation of one thing into another, 
may, to a certain extent, be neglected for these things 
themselves ? This, to a certain extent, is indeed possible, 
but only to a certain extent. Did we altogether neglect 
the dialectic that transforms substantiality into causality, 
or that that transforms causality into reciprocity, for 
example, we should find that we had not attained the 
metaphysic of these notions, the explanation of them. 
For it is to be said, that Hegel (possibly even in inde- 
pendence of the dialectic) has fairly thought out the 
problem of all these notions, and the result is contained 
in the dialectic. One suspects this dialectic, distrusts it ; 
still its power is wonderful. In approaching in the * logic,' 
for instance, the exposition of the Absolute (an exposition 
that does not appear in the Encyclopaedia), one is apt to 
say to one's-self, What we shall have here will be the old 
difficulty of finite and infinite, that if God is the affirma- 
tion of all that is, he is likewise, and even so, its 
negation : that will be turned and returned, and advance 
there will be none. But let him but honestly live him- 
self into the discussion, and he will admit, in the end, 
that the Absolute has been very fairly construed into the 
Attribute, and the Attribute into the Modus. Still, it 
is to be admitted, that to take on one's-self the full 
weight of the dialectic is to expose one's-self almost to 
insupportable pain. Hegel, then, whether led to it by 
the dialectic, or by a previous and independent study, 
must be credited with the most satisfactory answers yet 
to the whole body of the various metaphysical problems. 
The Aristotelian logic he has similarly made once more 
alive. Returning to his secret, however, we may again 
say that no abstract speech about ' negation,' etc., will 
ever explain it ; it is simply tnis, That, in earnest with 
idealism, he sought the radical of thought, and applied it, 
when found, resolvingly to all things that are in heaven 
or upon earth. This is the true answer, and, however 
familiar, however popular, the system of Hegel may 
become in the course of generations, in consequence of 
the completion of its exposition in such detail as is 
applied, in the Secret of Hegel, to quality and other 
sections of the Logic, there never will be an answer in a 
single proposition easier or closer. It is this, in the 
main, that the present annotator claims to have first 
said and demonstrated. In this reference, then, the 
2b 



434 ANNOTATIONS. 

answer of Schwegler is not satisfactory. His expressions 
in regard to Schelling, and Fiehte, and Kant, are wide 
of, or simply beside, the truth. His explanations about 
'negation,' and 'position,' and 'opposites,' etc., are 
abstractions without a glimpse of the concrete reality 
involved. When he says, then (p. 324), ' His (Hegel's) 
beginning is not with certain highest axioms in which all 
further development is already implicitly contained, and 
serves consequently simply for their more particular 
characterization ; but, taking stand on what requires no 
further support of proof, on the simplest notion of reason, 
that of pure being, he deduces thence, in a progress from 
abstracter to concreter notions, the complete system of 
pure, rational knowledge,' he does not explain, he wholly 
misses, the real concrete beginning, and only substitutes 
therefor the formal and abstract start. Similarly, when 
he speaks (p. 323) of the deduction of the notions, ' the 
one from the other,' etc., he has no perception of the one 
original central notion to the movement of which the 
whole is due. This perception, indeed, is still absent 
when his language is otherwise correct. Thus it is correct 
to say (p. 317), 'This immanent spontaneous evolution 
of the notion is the method of Hegel ; ' but still the pro- 
position is, so to speak, blind till we know what notion ; 
and Schwegler has nowhere extended us that. Again 
(p. 316), this is correct and admirably descriptive indeed, 
' Thought is not one external form of the absolute beside 
others ; it is the absolute itself in its concrete unity of 
self ; it is the idea come back to itself — the idea that 
knows itself to be the truth of nature, and the power in 
it ; ' but even granting Schwegler to know that existence 
is the absolute identity, and in its absolute difference, there is 
no hint here of the triple nisus of thought that is the 
unseen agency of the whole. 

Assuming now, then, that the difficulty of reading in 
Hegel has been sufficiently explained, we pass to the 
second circumstance that disheartens his student, and 
that is the difficulty, as regards the system, of attaining 
to a summary conception of its general result. Where is 
God in the system ? it is asked ; and what is its ruling 
on the immortality of the soul ? Now, it is to be con- 
fessed that doubts as to how to answer these questions 
exist even within what i3 called the school, and some time 
will pass, probably, before, to universal satisfaction, they 
cad be fairly resolved. The creed of Hegel is undoubtedly 



HEGEL. 435 

spiritualism ; it is not materialism. What alone exists 
for Hegel, what alone substantially is, is thought. But 
then it readily occurs to be objected, It is very true that 
all actual existences pass, and that what alone is per- 
manent is the intelligible relations and ideas which these 
existences express ; but still it is only these existences 
that have or had reality, the positive fruition of actual 
being, while these so-called permanent ideas are after all 
but relations, forms, that, always existing not per se, but 
only per alhid, can never be said to exist in truth at all. 
Annihilate the things, and where are your forms ? The 
forms of mathematics exist in all things, but without 
the things, what were mathematics for a life ? It is this 
shadowy universal that, apparently alone the outcome of 
Hegel, is the greatest difficulty in his regard ; for if that 
be all, then there is for man neither a God nor an immor- 
tality, in whom, or which, he can take the smallest interest. 
That is pantheism. Only the idea is, all forms are but 
its expressions ; they pass, but it endures for ever. It is 
this that has substantiated itself in the world ; it is this 
that substantiates itself in history. What is, then, is the 
idea, the reason of this universe, and it is a system in 
itself. The visible universe, indeed, is of this system 
but the perishable and ever perishing phenomenon. The 
idea is the noumenon, which, timeless and spaceless, alone 
is. Man, men, are the necessary singulars in whom this 
universal and this particular meet and are realized. He 
is the concrete in whom are actualized both abstractions. 
The highest form of the idea, for example, is ever 
corporealized in the arts, sciences, and institutions, in 
the religions and philosophies of man. The individual 
man perishes, but the majestic spectacle remains. In a 
word, thought alone is, and for its own life, its own 
growth, it uses up the solidity of things, whose perpetual 
death is its perpetual birth. This, as said, is, as I under- 
stand it, pantheism ; and it is the most hopeless theory 
that has ever been offered to humanity. If this is the 
result of Hegel, and if it is to be understood as demon- 
strated truth, then, to my view, it is the most unfortunate 
result that has ever issued, and the disappearance of man, 
as but a pithecus intelilgens, into the shelves of the rock, 
cannot be long to wait for. Idealism and materialism 
here fall together with a vengeance, and the only question 
that remains between them is, whether are the ideal rela- 
tions or the material exemplifications the prius ? — a 



436 ANNOTATIONS. 

question that will be answered so soon as it is determined 
whether the hen or the egg is first. 

* Be near me when my light is low, 
Be near me when my faith is dry 1 ' 

In days of doubt, these are the cries of the faithful. 
So it is, then, that, though to me the creed of Hegel 
is not that pantheism of despair that gives itself big 
words only, there have been times when he rose 
before me haggard, wan, his brow wet with the per- 
spiration of hopelessness — a hopelessness confessed by 
the hollow laughter itself, by the very audacity that 
would conceal it. However painful, then, ' I do not 
wonder at, nor seek to hide, the unfortunate experi- 
ences of some who at least began with Hegel. Through 
what strange series of beliefs or unbeliefs does not Feu- 
erbach descend from the logical idea to naked sense ! 
' Der Mensch ist was er isst,' man is what he eats : the 
little gleam of a calembour is the only spiritual consola- 
tion that remains to him / Oh, the pity of it ! And 
what but pity is allowed us as we hang by the couch 
of ' the invalid of the Rue d'Amsterdam ' over the white 
ash of an utter contempt for life, for existence, for 
this the necessary outcome of the all, of reason — the 
white ash which once was so warm a heart, so eager 
and so swift a soul ? 

1 Hold thou the good : define it well : 
For fear divine Philosophy 
Should push beyond her mark, and be 
Procuress to the Lords of Hell.' 

But, worst of all, Huge, the bold, brilliant Huge, whose 
special merit it was ' to have first introduced the 
youth of Halle into the metaphysical depths of the Hege- 
lian philosophy,' winds up his destiny by translating 
— for Germans ! — that hollow make-believe of windy 
conceit, Buckle's Civilisation in England! It is diffi- 
cult, indeed, to support Hegel under such a blow as 
this last! But is it right to lay wholly at his door 
the calamities of the stylists, or the temper of the 
time? The fiery heads that light up the day with 
the rockets of genius, have yet, in subjective vanity, 
subjective impatience, hardly opportunity for the slow 
and laborious accumulation of principles. By such men, 
then, Hegel is not to be judged, nor by the revolt 
of such men is his school destroyed. The historian 



HEGEL. 437 

Ueberweg testifies, to-day even, that * the philosophy the 
most in vogue in the philosophical schools of Germany 
is still the Hegelian.' Then as for the temper of the 
time, it is for Schopenhauer that life is ' a cheat, and 
a uselessly interrupting episode in the blissful repose 
of nothing, ' and Schopenhauer hated Hegel. 

We shall not burden Hegel with the whole weight 
of his own time, then, nor, should our own lamp, or 
the lamps of others, burn as low or as extravagantly 
as they may, shall we impute to him alone the blame 
of it. This is certain, that if the result of Hegel is 
the pantheistic despair in question, his entire industry 
has simply stultified itself. The philosophy of Hegel 
was avowedly a philosophy of restoration and religious 
orthodoxy, and his action throughout was essentially 
a reaction against the Aufklarung — against i^iat strip- 
ping naked of all things in heaven or upon earth at 
the hands of the modern party of unbelief, and under 
guidance of so-called reason or rationalism. The result- 
ing anarchy of naked, isolated, unsupported atoms was 
plain to him. Only in religious belief is society possible, 
he thought. And a nation that believes not in God and 
the immortality of the soul, in the supernatural element 
generally, must, it appeared to him, even in its own 
madness, speedily dissipate and destroy itself. The 
negative, then, to Hegel, had now functioned to the 
full ; it had done its work ; and it was time for the 
affirmative to step in. His aim, then, was to provide 
us with an affirmative body of knowledge, theoretical, 
practical, and aesthetic, in which the great truths of 
natural and revealed religion should once more regain 
their authority, but in harmony with the rights of intel- 
ligence and the light of free thought. 

In confirmation of this position we may point out, in 
the first place, that Hegel must be credited with a 
perfect faith in his principle. I confess that, for my 
part, this principle is still to be verified ; but, very 
evidently, it was not so for Hegel. He speaks again 
and again, and apparently with the most perfect assur- 
ance, of philosophy being now at last realized by it ; 
whatever be the sphere, indeed, he cannot move a 
step without it, and it seems not to have been always 
for him a canon of regulation, but sometimes also an 
organon of discovery. There are several points of view 
in his iEsthetic and Philosophy of History, for example, 



438 ANNOTATIONS. 

to which he appears to have been led in simply prosecut- 
ing the dialectic of the notion. 

In the second place, I am convinced that Hegel 
believed in the existence of God — of God as a subject, 
too, and not merely as substance. ' God,' he says (Pro- 
pcedeutik, page 75), 'is the Absolute Spirit, that is to 
say, He is the pure essential being that makes Himself- 
object to Himself, but so only regards Himself; or in 
this other that He has become, has directly returned 
into Himself, and is identical with Himself. According 
to the moments of this being, God is (1.) absolutely 
Holy, so far as He is in Himself the absolutely universal 
being. He is (2.) absolute Power, so far as He realizes 
the All, and preserves the individual in the All, or is 
eternal Creator of the Universe. He is (3.) Wisdom, so 
far as His power is only holy power; (4.) Goodness, so 
far as He leaves the individual free in his actuality ; 
and (5.) Justice, so far as He eternally restores the 
individual to the universal* (through mortification of 
self, or sin, that is). 'The position of religion,* he says 
again (Hist, of Phil. i. page 87), ' is this, that the revela- 
tion of the truth, which we receive through it, is a 
revelation externally given to man ; hence it is said, 
that he must accept it in humility, human reason being 
of itself incapable of attaining thereto. The character 
of positive religion is, that its truths are, without our 
knowing whence or how they have come, and in such 
wise that what they contain, as given to us, is conse- 
quently above and beyond our reason. Sometime, 
through prophet or divine messenger, the truth is de- 
clared ; as Ceres and Triptolemus, who introduced till- 
age of the soil and wedlock, are therefore honoured 
by the Greeks, so were the nations grateful for Moses 
and Mahomet. This externality, as regards what indi- 
vidual the truth has been given by, is something his- 
torical, that for the absolute import in itself is indifferent, 
seeing that the person is not the import of the doctrine 
itself. In the Christian religion, however, this is pecu- 
liar, that this person of Christ, His character to be the 
Son of God, does itself belong to the very nature of God. 
"Were Christ for Christians only a teacher, like Pytha- 
goras, Socrates, or Columbus, then there were here no 
universal divine message, no revelation, no instruction 
respecting the nature of God, in regard to which alone 
we desire instruction. The truth, no doubt, let it stand 



HEGEL. 439 

on whatever stadium it may, must first come to mankind 
in an external manner, in the form of a sensuously per- 
ceived, actually present object : as Moses caught sight 
of God in the burning bush, and the Greeks gave them- 
selves a consciousness of their gods in figures of marble 
or other such representations. But then, neither in re- 
ligion nor philosophy do we, or ought we to, remain by 
this externality. Such form of imagination, or such 
historical import, as in the latter case Christ, must for 
spirit become spirit, and so cease to be an externality ; 
for the mode of externality is not the mode of spirit. 
"We are to know God " in spirit and in truth ; " God is 
the Universal, the Absolute, the Essential Spirit. As 
regards the relation of the human spirit to this spirit, 
the following are the characteristics.' And now there 
follows as intelligible and at the same time as profound 
a speculative exposition of the relation of the finite to 
the infinite spirit as can be found in the whole series of 
the works of Hegel, and which leaves no doubt of God 
being to Hegel a concrete being and no logical abstrac- 
turn. It is here that Hegel exclaims, * I am a Lutheran, 
and will remain one.' In presence of such things, and 
of the innumerable similar intimations that pervade the 
whole works of Hegel, it is impossible to believe in 
aught but the theism of the writer, or else in his own 
unparalleled self- stultification. We may refer in par- 
ticular to the Philosophy of Religion, the Philosophy of 
History, and the History of Philosophy. How, other- 
wise than on the supposition of his theism, can we 
account for Hegel's incessant defence of the various 
theological arguments against the objections of Kant, 
and, in particular, for those Proofs for the Existence of 
God, which he had but completed for the press when the 
fatal cholera seized him? The ordinary abstraction of 
the deistic Stre supreme was certainly rejected by Hegel, 
but he had as certainly realized to himself the nature of 
the true God with a depth of vision never before exem- 
plified. Mr. Lewes's extraordinary mistake in this con- 
nexion has a note to itself. 

In the third place, it appears to me that the whole 
tendency of the writings of Hegel supports belief in the 
immortality of the soul. In reply ( Works, xvii. p. 226) 
to an opponent who professes not to find this doctrine in 
the philosophy of Hegel, Hegel himself asks : — * Is it 
not the case that in this philosophy the spirit is elevated 



440 ANNOTATIONS. 

above all those categories which involve Decease, De- 
struction, Death, etc., to say nothing of other equally 
express declarations ?' In fact, we have but to recollect 
the warm manner in which Hegel hails all such cate- 
gories as the Infinite, declaring ' that at the name of the 
Infinite, there rises to the soul its own light,' at the 
same time that he speaks of the melancholy (Trauer) of 
the thought of finitude, and, though 'the most stiff- 
necked category of the understanding,' resolves it — we 
have but to recollect these and other such expressions, 
as that unreality death, the death of the body is the 
birth of the spirit, the soul is concrete at death, and has 
taken up into itself the freight of the world, and then 
the whole express discussion of the subject in the Philo- 
sophy of Religion — we have but to recollect all this, I 
say, to feel convinced of the perfect loyalty of Hegel to 
the 'hope of immortality.' His remarks on Kant's 
application of the category of degree to the soul is to the 
same effect ; and there is that even in his treatment of 
Mesmerism which claims for him a belief in the concrete 
existence of the individual in the universal. 

In the fourth place, what are we to make of the Vin- 
dication of Christianity as the Revealed Religion ? Are 
we to believe that Hegel is here a hypocrite ? No, that 
is impossible ; Christianity is to Hegel a concrete truth, 
and he is nowhere more in earnest than in the specula- 
tive founding or grounding of all its dogmas. And the 
'speculative' of Hegel is not the 'moral' of Kant, but 
the very inmost nerve of religious thought, such as we 
find only in our deepest and truest theologians. As 
a single token of the nature of his belief, we may state 
that the resurrection of Christ is to Hegel an actual 
fact. But if Hegel has speculatively demonstrated 
the truth of Christianity, what consequences immediately 
follow ? Surely belief in the existence of God and the 
immortality of soul among the first ! What were the 
sense, indeed, of an effort to reconcile philosophy and 
Christianity as the Eevealed Religion, that yet rejected 
all belief in God and the immortality of the soul ? 

The one object of Hegel, then, was to support or re- 
store belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, and 
in the revealed nature of the Christian religion. How- 
ever abstract and merely logical, indeed, the terms 
Notion and Idea may sound, they as little preclude 
belief in the concrete spirit of God as in the concrete 



HEGEL. 441 

spirit of man. Thought without a thinker is inconceiv- 
able, and absolute thought involves an absolute subject. 
It throws light on this one object of Hegel to consider 
that it was not the believing but the unbelieving that he 
conceived himself to address. The great thing at last 
for Hegel was a good citizen, and for him who was 
already that, there was to Hegel's mind no call for philo- 
sophy. Thus he tells a M. Duboc who writes to him 
about his difficulties with the system, that, as a good 
head of a house and father of a family, possessed of 
a faith that is firm, he has pretty well enough, and may 
consider anything further, in the way of philosophy, for 
instance, as but a Luxus des Geistes — an intellectual 
luxury. The philosophy of Hegel, then, was not ad- 
dressed to those whose natural moral and religious in- 
stincts were already sound, but to those — they are 
called * educated minds,' 'higher souls,' etc. — who had 
been disintegrated by the thoughtless sceptical levity, 
or, it may be, by the thoughtful sceptical melancholy 
of the day. But reconciliation of the discarded concrete 
to thought, was evidently here the central necessity. 
Hence, as we have seen, a scrutiny of thought so pro- 
found that it was for the most part unintelligible, and 
at the same time apparently so exhaustive that it excited 
the absurdest expectations. W T e have here the elements 
for an explanation of the monstrous aberrations of the 
'German Critics,' Strauss, Bauer, Huge, Feuerbach, 
and others. Intelligence baffled, at the same time that 
speculation seemed absolutely at term, despair could be 
the only outcome. But this despair could not be idle, 
and all the less that it felt itself preternaturally gifted 
by the invincible weapons with which the study of 
Hegel, unsuccessful in the main issue as it was, had 
abundantly supplied it. Hence that wonderful activity of 
attack against all the pillars of religion which for some 
years slackened not, and which even yet, especially in 
France and England, is not wholly exhausted. Of the 
absurd expectations alluded to, Krug's appeal to Hegel 
for a deduction of his writing -quill, affords a good ex- 
ample. It is by no means intended to be hinted that 
the German Critics nourished any such ridiculous ex- 
pectation as this of Krug. Dissatisfaction with the 
dialectic and its results ; darkness, especially with re- 
gard to the main mysteries of life ; belief in the com- 
pletion of speculation, and involuntary apprehension of 



442 ANNOTATIONS. 

its failure — this is all that we would impute to them. 
We must not expect too much from Hegel, however, as 
a slight consideration of his principle will readily de- 
monstrate. What that principle lays out, according to 
the immanent tree, is this world ; and Hegel, in restor- 
ing the foundations of knowledge, and action, and be- 
lief, would not compete with Swedenborg, nor introduce 
us into actual experience of the future state or presence 
of God. A supernatural element has accompanied man 
throughout his whole history ; a supernatural element 
is, to the majority of human beings, as obviously present 
in the world as the natural one ; Hegel saw this gene- 
ral conviction of humanity, conceived it justified, and 
sought to give it logical precision — not without immense 
success, but still not without what to a spirit-rapping 
age must appear lacunas. This is the brief of the matter; 
and so far as any direct (sensuous) knowledge of the 
supernatural is concerned, after as before Hegel — and 
perfectly with his consent — the ancient mysteries are 
mysteries stilL 

Hegel's merit, nevertheless, is the vindication of rea- 
son as against understanding, of the faculty that unites 
and brings together as against the faculty that separates 
and only in separation knows. Nor is this vindication 
anywhere more successful than in the religious element. 
The relation of finite and infinite is existent fact ; com- 
munion, then, identity and yet difference, this was the 
necessity to be explained, and we may assume Hegel to 
have accomplished it. His unintelligible language, how- 
ever, I would animate by the following metaphor, which 
may at least render the unio rnystica at once credible and 
intelligible. 

Suppose all that existed in the world were a single drop 
of water — space and its contents retracted into that. 
Well, evidently, seeing that it is only one drop that is 
concerned, there is no room for any considerations of size. 
It is indifferent whether we figure the drop as a pin's 
point or a pin's head in magnitude. This drop, then, 
shall be the Absolute. But this drop now is not more 
one than it is many. It is a drop, a one, a single entity, 
and yet, whether it be infinitely small or infinitely large, 
being a water drop, it consists of an infinitude of droplets 
each of which is a one — a drop, quite as much as the 
original one, though only subordinate and dependent. 
Now even so I can figure Spirit and Spirits, the Monaa 



HEGEL. 443 

fend the Monads. Then further, if we conceive that these 
spirits, monads, droplets, are not externalities but inter- 
nalities — completed internalities — there is room for the 
additional conception of each of them, the individual 
droplets and the universal drop, being phenomenally, say 
in the manner of a shadow, sundered or projected into 
externalities, an external world, which should apparently 
surround all and each of them, though they themselves 
were self -retained. ' And God said, Let there be light, 
and there was light : ' the summed internality saw before 
itself, still self -retained, its own self externalized, and con- 
stituting in the fashion of externality, a boundless out and 
out of contingent, material, infinitely various atoms, into 
which fell, however, as principle of retention, the shadow 
of the original tree of intellect. 

1 Friendless was the mighty Lord of all 
And felt defect .... 
From the cup o' th' realm of spirits 
Foams now infinitude.' 

In this manner I think we may provide a Vorstellung 
for the Begriff of the necessary unity of finite and in- 
finite, and so that the one shall not unavoidably disappear 
before the other, nor the preservation in the spirit- world 
of the whole burthen of time — all those innumerable 
savages that slaughtered each other for example — any 
longer shock. Necessary existence here is necessary exis- 
tence there. That Hegel would accept this illustration of 
his Triune Notion, it would be too much to say. It will be 
allowed, however, to be one at least probably in point. 

Independent, then, of the great and undeniable contri- 
butions of Hegel to logic, to psychology, to moral and 
political philosophy, to aesthetics, to the philosophy of 
history, and to the history of philosophy, I think we may 
ascribe to him great light on all the speculative elements 
of religion also. In vindicating thought alone as the 
substantial element in the universe, he has extended 
immense support to every spiritual interest, and it were 
well did the Church but recognise in Hegel the most 
powerful bulwark that has ever, perhaps, been offered 
it. For all that, nevertheless, the work of Hegel is, as 
said, human ; and it is impossible for speculation im- 
possible for theory, to satiate the longing of man. After 
Plotinus, as we have seen, in ancient times, speculation 
was exhausted, aud men were irresistibly driven to force 



444 ANNOTATIONS. 

a sign — to actual supersession of the laws of nature, 
to actual excitation of the deity by practices Thauma- 
turgic and Theurgic. The present epoch of the modern 
world is, in many respects, very similar to that epoch of 
the ancient. As, however, it was the Christian religion 
that saved the world then, so it may be the same religion 
that shall save the world now. Man must subordinate 
himself, confess his limits, once again acknowledge that 
the great supernatural verities are for faith and a trial to 
his faith, and so once again humble himself in prayer as 
the only agent Theurgic and Thaumaturgic that ever will 
be allowed him to move Heaven withal. It is the good 
Kant — and to Hegel himself his own philosophy is but 
Kantian philosophy — that has probably struck the truth 
here : we must do our duty for the duty's sake, and not 
for any pathological motive which might easily lie in the 
ideas of reason (the moral postulates) were they demon- 
strated truths and not practical convictions simply — such 
convictions as extend the needed twilight to humanity, 
and not the sunshine that would blind. At all events it 
is to this practical element, to moral and political philo- 
sophy, that we would point as the great gain that may be 
derived from the Germans. And here at present is pre- 
cisely our own weak side. Ever since Reid, at whose heart 
lay the interests chiefly of the cognitive element, Ethics, 
and the practical sphere generally, have not received that 
attention in Great Britain that is their due. 1 This was 
not always so, however, and must not be any longer so. 
We must recall the example of Francis Hutcheson, to 
whom belongs, as well in Ethics as ^Esthetics, an historical 
value which has not yet, perhaps, been adequately recog- 
nised. Nor is this, as said, a difficulty now. From the 
rich and all-embracing quarries of Kant, Fichte, and 
Hegel, there are ethical principles to be derived, of the 
solidity of which no man can doubt, let his doubts be 
what they may of the theoretical principles of the whole 
of them. Is it not indeed to Hegel, and especially his 

1 The truth of this remark is well illustrated, as these annotations 
pass through the press, by Mr. Laurie's praiseworthy Notes on British 
Theories of Morals. Mr. Laurie's Notes are limited only to a few 
British theories, yet the confusions of British thinkers, manifest them- 
selves so exasperatingly rife in them that we are reminded of Milton's 
horror at the distraction of the Saxon Heptarchy. Man is a moral 
"being simply because he is a thinking being. That is the germ of the 
whole. Hence, in reality, the categorical imperative of Kant, and, 
more obviously, the free-will (the relation of the universal and the 
particular will) of Hegel. 



HEGEL. 445 

philosophy of ethics and politics, that Prussia owes that 
mighty life and organization she is now rapidly develop- 
ing ? Is it not indeed the grim Hegel that is the centre 
of that organization which, maturing counsel in an invis- 
ible brain, strikes, lightning-like, with a hand that i3 
weighted from the mass ? But as regards the value of 
this organization, it will be more palpable to many, 
should I say, that, while in constitutional England, Pre- 
ference-holders and Debenture-holders are ruined by the 
prevailing commercial immorality, the ordinary owners 
of Stock in Prussian Railways can depend on a safe aver- 
age of 8*33 per cent. This, surely, is saying something 
for Hegel at last ! 

The fundamental outlines of Hegel must now, I think, 
be evident to every reader. I have gained much from 
Hegel, and will always thankfully acknowledge that 
much, but, my position in his regard has been simply 
that of one, who in making the unintelligible intelligible, 
would do a service for the public : I have not sought, and 
do not seek, to be considered a disciple. Hegel's great 
formal task has been to substitute the actual pulse of 
thought for the artificial principle of Fichte. Hence the 
Dialectic. This dialectic, it appears to me, has led to much 
that is equivocal both in Hegel and in others, and may 
become a pest yet. Not for his formal but for his sub- 
stantial contributions, then, to logic and metaphysic, to 
ethics and politics, to aesthetics, to history, criticism, 
science, and religion, is it that Hegel, to my mind, will 
have his praise yet. His History of Philosophy alone is 
sufficient to stamp him a Colossus of unparalleled work, 
a Colossus of the most penetrating and original sagacity. 
My task has been to make plain what Hegel meant by 
the word Notion. Whether that Notion be really the 
pulse of thought — that is what is still to be verified — ■ 
that is what I still doubt. So long as that doubt remains, 
I am not properly an Hegelian. My general aim, how- 
ever, I conceive to be identical with Hegel's — though on 
a level quite incommensurably lower — that, namely, of a 
Christian philosopher. 

I may add that the position I assign to Hegel is the 
position claimed by himself ; and every word of those 
very critics, who would lead all into issues absolutely 
antagonistic, — every word of Huge, for example, — will be 
found thoroughly and completely to substantiate this. 



446 ANNOTATIONS. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 



Why the History of Philosophy ends with Hegel and 
not with Comte. 

I HOLD Schwegler to be perfectly right in closing the 
history of philosophy with Hegel, and not with 
Comte. Descriptions of the German philosophical move- 
ment since Hegel, such as we possess from the practised 
pen of Professor Erdmann, are exceedingly interesting and 
instructive ; but when, in other writers, one surveys the 
various names that are subsecutive to that of Hegel, one 
cannot help ' wondering,' like Hegel himself in reference 
to Wendt, ' was da Alles als Philosophie aufgefuhrt 
wird? Among these names, however, so far as the Ger- 
mans are concerned, and so far as I know, the name of 
Comte is not included. It is the French, and, perhaps, 
especially the English, who have assumed the vindica- 
tion of his claims. Mr. Lewes, for one, fervidly presses 
them, and it is thus competent to us to turn our regards 
on them. Any consideration of them here, however, 
must now be only brief as well as very insufficiently 
authoritative in consequence of its dependence on know- 
ledge only at second hand. 1 - Both Mr. Lewes and Mr. 
Mill, nevertheless, offer us such accounts of Comte as 
are at least intended to produce a certain knowledge of 
him, and accordingly warrant discussion of his doctrines 
so far. As regards these doctrines, the most valuable 
statement contained in the work of Mr. Lewes is that 
extracted from Mr. Mill's relative article in the West- 
minster Review, and to that article, therefore, I shall, in 
the following — indications rather than discussion — on 
the whole cod fine myself. The article is an able one, 
calm, clear, and comprehensive : surely we have at least 
the means in it of enabling us to do some justice to the 
teaching of M. Comte. 

l See p. 467. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NO TES. 447 

The fundamental merits attributed to M. Comte are 
two in number : 1. His arrangement of the sciences ; . 
and 2. His so-called law of historical evolution. ^ 

I. M. Comte's arrangement of the sciences is into 
Abstract and Concrete. The Abstract are Mathematics 
(Number, Geometry, Mechanics), Astronomy, Physics 
(Barology, Thermology, Acoustics, Optics, Electrology), 
Chemistry, Biology, and Sociology. The Concrete again 
are ' postponed as not yet formed, ' but they are repre- 
sented by Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology. 

II. The so-called law of evolution, again, is that 
' every distinct class of human conceptions ' has, in its 
historical development, ' necessarily ' exhibited three 
successive stages, named, respectively, the Theological, 
the Metaphysical, and the Positive. Accordingly, the 
single point to which the labours of M. Comte direct 
themselves, is the demonstration and establishment of 
the method of the ultimate and crowning Positive stage 
as the ultimate and crowning Positive method which 
henceforth, as alone legitimate, is alone to be adopted. 
This method, finally, is the investigation of pheno- 
mena simply as phenomena, or simply in their direct 
relations of association, whether simultaneous or suc- 
cessive, and without consideration of what they may 
be in themselves or in their own inner nature. The 
Positive method, in short, replaces all * outlying agencies,' 
whether Theological deities or Metaphysical entities by 
Positive laws ; which laws, and in their mere pheno- 
menal relativity, as alone what can be known, ought 
alone to constitute what is sought to be known. 

The most superficial glance at the pages of either Mr. 
Mill or Mr. Lewes will adequately prove what has just 
been said. To Mr. Lewes, for example, the arrangement 
of the sciences * is nothing less than an organization of 
the sciences into a Philosophy ; ' and he frequently 
speaks of the ' famous loi des trois etats * as ' Comte's 
discovery of the Law of Evolution ;' while he evidently 
regards these two * integral parts,' with the method they 
involve, as constitutive of the philosophical achievement 
of Auguste Comte. * These,' he says, ' are his contribu- 
tions, his titles to immortal fame,' ' the great legacy he 
has left.' Mr. Mill, again, if less enthusiastic, is no less 
decided. The arrangement of the sciences, for instance, he 
styles ' a very important part of M. Comte's philosophy,' 
a classification, which, if the best classification is that 



448 ANNO TA TIONS. 

which is grounded on the properties the most important 
for our purposes, ' will stand the test ; ' and in the same 
connexion, he speaks of ' that wonderful systematization 
of the philosophy of all the antecedent sciences/ which 
is a ' great philosophical achievement.' The so-called 
law of evolution, again, he regards as 'the most fun- 
damental of the doctrines which originated with M. 
Comte,' 'the key to M. Comte's other generalizations, 
all of which are more or less dependent on it,' 'the 
backbone, if we may so speak, of his philosophy,* etc. 
And as concerns the general conclusion in reference to 
a Positive method, his expressions of satisfaction are in- 
cessant : ' belief in invariable laws constitutes the Posi- 
tive mode of thought,' and this mode of thought is to 
M. Comte, with the approbation of Mr. Mill, ' the funda- 
mental doctrine of a true philosophy.' Evidently, then, 
it is not without warrant that we assume the titles of 
M. Comte to the place of a princeps in philosophy to 
depend on his demonstrating the law of evolution, and 
philosophizing the sciences, to the general result of the 
Positive principle or method ; and this, all consideration 
apart of the necessarily numerous merits in detail of a 
writer so gifted as M. Comte. On this understanding 
we proceed to the statement of a few objections. 

Of the classification of the sciences we remark, in the 
first place, that it is confessedly incomplete. The latter 
half is even written up a possibility merely, while in the 
former, a capital subdivision (Barology, etc.) is admitted 
to remain independent of the general principle. In the 
second place, this general principle itself, while the most 
common and the least recondite, is at the same time the 
most vague and the least discriminative expedient of 
classification in existence. To take the simpler first 
and the more complicated last, is, on every question of 
arrangement, the first suggestion of every child of Adam. 
Grocers, drapers, apothecaries, the cook in the kitchen, 
the school-girl that sets up housekeeping on some wall 
or doorstep — these and a score more are there for the 
proof. As regards vagueness, again, it will be sufficient 
to point out that the distinction involved is only quanti- 
tative ; it is simply a less or more ; it is wholly inappli- 
cable to, it is wholly inexplicative of, quality. In the 
third place, the distinction of abstract and concrete, as 
applied to the two chief classes, is really a misnomer. 
The second class certainly considers exi&tents, and the 



8 UPPLEMENTAR Y NO TES. 449 

first only existe)ice,but this distinction — and it is now only 
truly named — is either not properly a distinction of abs- 
tract and concrete at all, or it is a different abstract and 
joncrete from that already used, and this difference, which 
is alone significant, is alone unsignalized. In the fourth 
place, this unsignalized difference, or this assumed iden- 
tity between the general and the particular principle of 
division, is itself a blot. In this way, in truth, there 
are not two principles, a general and a particular, but 
only one — a less or more of quantity ; and to stop at 
the end of the first half-dozen less or more concretes, 
and bar them off from the second half-dozen similarly 
less or more concretes, naming the former abstract 
alone and the latter concrete alone, is at once arbi- 
trary and idle, gratuitous and absurd. In the fifth 
place, there is no element of necessity present to 
guarantee either the adequacy, completeness, or, so 
to speak, foundedness of the division. Comte, like 
Xenophanes, has simply looked els rbv 6\ov ovpavov. 
That is, he has simply opened his eyes and taken up 
what he found to hand. Attempt at a demonstrated be- 
ginning there is none. I, Auguste Comte, find number 
to be what is most abstract, and I accordingly place it 
so. If you doubt me, go and look for yourself. Such 
procedure certainly satisfies the wants of many in Eng- 
land ; nevertheless it is but arbitrary and empirical. 
— {Apropos of this word empirical, let me remark, that, 
with the writers on Comte, it does not mean what it 
means here, something known by mere experiment of 
sense, but something generalized from individual experi- 
ence, as, for instance, a proverb might be.) If the begin- 
ning then is empirical, so also is the transition, and so 
also the end. Why does Geometry follow Number, or 
Mechanics Geometry, or Astronomy Mechanics, or Physics 
Astronomy, or Mineralogy Sociology ? And how is the 
enumeration known to be complete ? Have we not 
here a mere arbitrary breccia ? That extension should 
follow number or motion extension, where is the reason 
of this in the nature of the case ? That M. Comte places 
them so because he finds an ascending series of complexity 
in them, is not difficult to be said; but whence, in such 
things, this ascending series of complexity ? Many Eng- 
lishmen, as said, are satisfied with the fact ; those, how- 
ever, who are accustomed to Hegel, demand the reason of 
the fact, the necessity of the fact. In the sixth place, 
2f 



450 ANNOTATIONS. 

the division generally has no title to superiority whether 
as regards doctrine or as regards classification. It is im- 
possible to believe, for example, that it will be found ex- 
pedient in practice to begin education with Mathema- 
tics, pass on to Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Bio- 
logy, Sociology, and end with Mineralogy, Botany, and 
Zoology. A complete view of the objects of study may 
surely be more easily attained by simply glancing from 
the periphery to the centre, from nebula and star, and 
sun and planet, through the air to the earth, and from 
the earth to the ego. Empirically, at least, such glance 
is a great convenience, whatever order of study be the 
right one, and, in that respect, it is hard to see that M. 
Comte's classification possesses any advantage over the 
empirical one suggested. 

But, further, Mr. Mill himself signalizes such grave 
defects in the classification of M. Comte as the omission 
from it of Logic and Psychology, and a reference to Kant 
and Hegel will probably enable us to see more clearly its 
general insufficiency. The chapter of Kant's Kritik on 
the Architectonic of Pure Reason, begins thus : — ' By an 
architectonic I understand the art of systems. Systema- 
tic unity being the means of first raising common know- 
ledge into science, or of converting a mere aggregate of 
such knowledge into a system. Architectonic is the 
theory of the Scientific in our knowledge generally, and 
necessarily belongs therefore to the theory of method. 
The facts of our knowledge in general must, under con- 
trol of reason, constitute not a rhapsody but a system, 
in which alone they can have power to support and pro- 
mote the essential objects of reason. By a system, again, 
I understand the manifold of individual facts in subjec- 
tion to a single idea. This idea is that of the form of a 
whole, so far as through this whole, as well the amount of 
the manifold as the position of its parts mutually, is a 
priori determined. Such scientific idea includes therefore 
the object and the form of the whole which is in congruity 
with it. From the unity of the general object (purpose) to 
which all the parts, mutually related in its idea, refer, it re- 
sults that every part is, on occasion of a knowledge of the 
rest, capable (if absent) of being missed, and that no con- 
tingent addition or indeterminate amount of perfection, 
without possession of its own a priori defined limits, is 
possible. The whole is therefore articulated (articulatio) 
and not simply amassed (coacervatio) ; it may indeed 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 451 

Increase inwardly (per intus susceptionem), but not out- 
wardly (per appositionem) , just like the body of an ani- 
mal whose growth adds no member, but, without change 
of proportion, renders each stronger and abler for its pur- 
poses.' Kant goes on to define a technical unity to be 
* such as is proposed empirically in obedience to objects 
that only contingently present themselves, and cannot 
therefore, in their constitutive amount be a priori knowu ; 
while an architectonic unity is * such as results from an 
idea, where reason a priori foretells, and does not merely 
empirically expect the particular objects.' It is only the 
architectonic unity that is competent to science. The 
rest of the chapter will recompense perusal. It is in 
consequence of a thorough assimilation of all these ideas 
of Kant that Hegel now offers us his classifications. For 
the Hegelian ' Philosophy of the Sciences/ in especial, 
we refer to the * Philosophy of Nature, ' and for a 
counterpart to * Sociology ' to the * Philosophy of Right.' 
As regards the sciences, the great divisions are at once 
Mechanics, Physics, and Organics. Hegel, however, 
points to no empirical expediency, or mere external 
quantitative increase, in justification of these rubrics : he 
demonstrates his beginning, he demonstrates his transi- 
tion, and he demonstrates his end. The subdivision of 
the first division, and similarly demonstrated, runs thus : 
Mathematical Mechanics, Finite Mechanics (Gravity), 
and Absolute Mechanics (Astronomy). These again are 
further subdivided. Physics rigorously divided and sub- 
divided in obedience to the same scientific principles 
embrace Chemistry, Electricity, Optics, etc., while Orga- 
nics concern Geological, Vegetable, and Animal Organism. 
It is only in reason and consistency that what in Hegel 
corresponds to Sociology constitutes but a portion of 
what relates to the whole subject of mind and the mani- 
festations of mind. This portion, however, occupies a 
volume for itself, and this volume may be confidently 
pronounced the most perfect and complete body of juris- 
prudential, ethical, and political principles at present in 
existence. We have not space for exposition, but in com- 
parison with the little that has been indicated, perhaps 
the unguaranteed, contingent, fragmentary, and really 
miscellaneous nature of the Comtian classification will be 
now allowed. Mr. Mill says ■ it is always easy to find 
fault with a classification ;' but we beg to add that it is 
always easy to propose one, and that an easier proposi- 



452 ANNOTATIONS. 

tion was never offered than, The simplest first ! Any 
real internal dependence of a later on an earlier, of 
Chemistry on Geometry or Astronomy, for example, we 
very much doubt. Though more complicated, too, the 
later cannot always be said to be more ' arduous ' than 
the earlier ; nor is it even apparent that the method of 
the earlier, though naturally never unwelcome, is really 
a necessary presupposition for the study of the later. 
But the reader can satisfy himself here with a glance 
at the table for himself. In conclusion, bearing in mind 
that a logical division is natural, and not artificial, or 
that it is accomplished by a principle exhaustive of 
what is divided and taken from what is divided, we 
would point to the success of Hegel in these respects, 
and the failure of Comte. We pass now to Comte's 
second merit. 

Is it true that every distinct class of human conceptions 
has — historically — been first Theologically, then Meta- 
physically, and lastly Positively regarded ? On the Theo- 
logical head, it is no special merit of M. Comte to have 
pointed out the characteristics of the Polytheistic ages. 
All that has been said by Comte in that reference has 
been said a thousand times long before him. It is natu- 
ral to early men to hypostasize the various powers of 
nature : of that there can be no doubt ; and all that con- 
cerns the rise of Fetichism into Monotheism has been 
exhausted, and from various points of view, Religious, 
Political, and ^Esthetic, by Hegel. That every class of 
human conceptions, nevertheless, has experienced a theo- 
logical stage, can evidently not be entertained, and Mr. 
Mill himself admits as much. Was man's cooking, or 
clothing, or decorating, or hunting, or fishing, or count- 
ing, or measuring first of all theological, then? Was 
there a theological first to Geometry (Mr. Mill says no), 
or Geology, or Geography, or Zoology, or Botany, or 
Optics, or Acoustics, or Chemistry, or Anatomy, or 
Mineralogy, or Logic, or Agriculture, or Architecture, 
or Music, or Drawing, or Grammar, or Philology, or 
Phrenology, or Political Economy? The supposition is 
absurd, and there is no merit whatever in the theological 
suggestion of M. Comte but what belongs to the philo- 
sophy of religion in general — a philosophy that is ex- 
plained to us by very different writers from M. Comte. 
Let ingenuity do what it may in disproof, it will remain 
ingenuity merely. 



X UPPLEMENTA R 7 NO TES. 453 

As for the Metaphysical stage, how are we to under- 
stand it ? It is generally understood a3 if all the 
philosophers from Thales to Hegel belonged to it and 
exemplified it. I take leave to say that this is not so. 
We are told that on the theological stage things were 
regarded as gods, and on the metaphysical as ' powers, 
forces, virtues, essences, occult qualities, considered as 
real existences, inherent in but distinct from the con- 
crete bodies in which they reside,' ' as impersonal entities 
interposed between the governing deity and the phe- 
nomena, and forming the machinery through which 
these are immediately produced.' But is this the con- 
ception of a single philosopher from Thales to Hegel? 
Thales thought that water was probably the basis of all 
things, which were but more or less rarefied or condensed 
forms of it : if for this idea, Thales is to be held to have 
looked on water as an unknown noumenon, and to be 
regarded accordingly as a metaphysician, what are we to 
say of the modern chemist who would think himself, not 
a Metaphysician, but the luckiest Savant in the world, 
could he but reduce all the elements in existence to the 
single or even double HO ? And is it really different 
with the other Ionics, Anaximander, Anaximenes, etc. ? 
The Pythagoreans who would account for the order and 
symmetry of the universe by mathematical ratios, did 
they hold by metaphysical essences then ? The Eleatics 
were only of opinion that all the multiplicity of this vast 
but orderly universe must be referable to a single prin- 
ciple that remained, and really had quite as little to do 
with essences and virtues as Comte himself. Considera- 
tion of the other pre-Socratics yields the same result — 
even the Love and Hate of Empedocles were in effect 
but metaphors for Attraction and Repulsion. Then as 
regards Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the aim of the whole 
three of them was but generalization, and generalization 
as it is understood by ourselves. Nor will I for one see 
inferiority in them for that of the two elements which 
constitute the universe — sensation and reflection — they 
chose the nobler as the truer. Even the Realism of the 
Schoolmen, if a belief in the prius of the thought, was 
no belief of an unknown thing within the object. Then 
coming down to modern times, what philosopher of the 
whole series was in quest of 'impersonal entities inter- 
posed between the governing deity and the phenomena?' 
Why, not one. Such was not the quest of Bacon, or of 



454 ANNOTATIONS. 

Descartes and Spinoza, or so to name their quest would 
be but to belie it. Did Hume demand * occult qualities' 
or * impersonal entities,' or Locke, or Condillac ? Is the 
Leibnitzian theory of the universe by means of the 
hypothesis of ideating monads really such as the Com- 
tians would have us believe ? As for Kant, his noumena 
are not the Comtian absurdities ; and of Hegel, who 
would simply account for the universe as it stands, by 
reference to a single principle that is a known constitu- 
ent of it, we need not speak. What Comte describes as 
metaphysical, then, is absolutely foreign to metaphysics. 
The slightest consideration, indeed, will demonstrate the 
weakness of the entire position. Both Mr. Mill and Mr. 
Lewes labour under a paucity of relative illustrations, 
and are both obliged to have recourse to what is suppo- 
sititious, offering occasion enough for a satirical humour 
were there but space. Why, even as regards that view 
of things which is termed metaphysical, there never was 
a time in the world's history when it was more prevalent 
than at present. A vastly greater number of effects, 
and infinitely more extraordinary effects, are now known 
and speculated on in reference to agents than in the 
whole of previous history. Look to the action of 
Chloroform, of Opium, of Hydrocyanic Acid, of Strych- 
nine, of the saliva or what else of the mad dog and 
the snake. Do we even, when we record the phe- 
nomena of these things in all their co-existences and 
relations, think that we have attained to the philosophy 
of them ? No, for all these relations, and for all these 
co-existences, there is a reason, and it is only when we 
know this reason, and not the mere relations or co-exist- 
ences themselves, that we possess philosophy. In the 
mere talk now-a-days of invariable antecedents, and in- 
variable consequents, is causality, then, once for all re- 
moved and done with ? The word invariable restores the 
whole problem, and it is scarcely credible that this 
should not be seen. Were there merely antecedents and 
consequents, trouble there would be none ; but the 
thing is that these antecedents and consequents are in- 
variable, and we must ask why. It is absurd to suppose 
that water extinguishes flame by a mere relation of an- 
tecedent and consequent, and without the nexus of a 
reason. What Comte means by Metaphysical then, is, 
in brief, Causal, and it is quite untrue that either he or 
Hume, or anybody else, has as yet eliminated it. But 



SUPPLEMENT } AR Y NO TES. 455 

this determines what we have to say on the third or 
positive stage, and it is the third or positive stage which is 
in reality the whole of Comtianism. 

The affirmation of this stage is that we have simply to 
determine the succession and co-existence of phenomena 
without question of anything but the phenomena and in 
these relations. Now, only so far as it eliminates caus- 
ality, is this affirmation different from the principle of 
empirical inquiry that has ever at any time obtained. 
It was wholly by a reference to the relations of pheno- 
mena that Thales said water, Anaximenes air, Pytha- 
goras numbers, Parmenides the One, Heraclitus process, 
Democritus atoms, Anaxagoras Nous, and the Socratics 
general ideas. Nor is it different among the moderns, 
who to the inquiring methods of the ancients add only 
that of express and calculated experiment. This only is, 
of course, much, but it is neither conditioned nor in- 
creased by Comte. Comte probably re-introduces in effect 
the whole body of metaphysics when he sanctions the 
questioning of nature by preliminary hypotheses, and even 
with him causality is only absent in name when invari- 
ability is present in fact. We have only space at present, 
however, for a word on this latter, causality. Cause, as 
Hume interprets it, means, Mr. Mill asserts, ■ the invari- 
able antecedent,' and * this is the only part of Mr. Hume's 
doctrine which was contested by his great adversary, 
Kant.' I cannot agree with either position. Hume, in 
custom, argued in effect, for the variability of causality ; 
this was his express sceptical object indeed ; and it was 
not the invariability which Hume saw in causality that 
Kant contested, but, on the contrary, the variability, — 
the variability, that is, which Hume, as it were, sought 
sceptically to insinuate into causality, by resting the 
(supposititious) necessary connexion which its idea seemed 
to involve on habit, custom, and the resultant subjective 
expectation. We are in the habit, Hume said, of finding 
things together, and so we expect still to find them 
together, but the invariability thus ascribed is but that 
of our own expectation. It is not objective, it is merely 
subjective. Kant, in reply, simply demonstrated that 
the proposition, Every change must have a cause, is 
not subjective but objective. The Comtians may, indeed, 
say that their invariability is but the invariability of 
subjective expectation and not of objective fact ; but 
habit is quite inadequate to the objective relations, in 



456 ANNOTATIONS. 

trust of which they construct science, and assert * savoir* 
to be 'prevoir.' Hume himself is not different : under 
the * necessary connexion' of reason which he always 
overtly denies, he always latently presupposes a ' constant 
conjunction * of nature. But properly studied nature and 
reason are identical : and, in ultimate instance, it is the 
latter that gives its force and virtue to causality, mere 
finite or subordinate category as it may be. This drop 
of white acid falls on this white wood, and the latter 
blackens. The wood is burned. Have we nothing here 
but an invariable antecedent and an invariable conse- 
quent ? Is there no nexus of reason that explains and 
demonstrates the invariability or why the wood is burned ? 
The wood is water and carbon, the water has united with 
the acid and left the carbon — black. That surely is a 
reason. That in the process a higher category than that 
of causality, reciprocity namely, is exemplified, by no 
means eliminates the reason. This reason is always, 
That difference is identity. A cause, then, is the rational 
antecedent of a consequent, and philosophy is, in all 
cases, nothing but the demonstration of this rationality 
which, of course, is not always explicit. There is really 
no gain, then, in the substitution of invariability for 
causality, but perhaps only much subjective sufficiency 
(as in Mr. Buckle) on one's own advancement. When 
one has generalized the action of fire, is it really simpler 
to say that fire has such and such invariable consequents, 
than to say that it has such and such a nature ? What is 
there in the word nature so used to terrify us ? Nature 
is but the identity into which the various consequents are 
reflected — simply that and no more — and that is a neces- 
sary mental act — that, indeed, is a necessary material 
fact, or there is nothing in existence that is not as well 
reflexion into itself as reflexion into other things, or 
more briefly still, a reflexion of its own differences into 
its own identity. The nature of an object is in point of 
fact simply the notion of it, and the notion of an object 
is the truth of an object. When we talk of nature in 
general, too, what is really implied is no * imaginary 
being' which Mr. Mill would have us eliminate, but 
simply the system or rational all of things. Mankind, 
the Comtians may depend on it, will continue to talk of 
nature in general and of a nature of things. And have 
not things a nature? How but by knowledge of its 
nature, of the sort of effects and consequents it is compe- 



S UPPLEMENTA RY NO TES. 457 

tent to initiate, is it possible for the physician of experi- 
ence to obtain a consequent from a drug which the latter 
was never known to possess before ? Or would this 
physician reason better, if he resolutely kept his drug a 
bare self -identical antecedent, undeepened, uncoucreted 
into a nature by reflexion into it of its own various con- 
sequents ? The truth of the matter is, that the word 
phenomena, as we are instructed to use it by the Posi- 
tivists, is really tantamount to noumena. Phenomena 
are not to be regarded as relations of things, that is, but 
as themselves things, as themselves noumena. Or, apart 
from the other, apart from the relation in which alone 
these two terms have sense, either is the other. Pheno- 
menon is as untrue as noumenon when understood as more 
than the one half of a relation. Predication is not truer 
than the subjects of predication. I know a great many 
consequents of this sulphuric acid, these consequents are 
the nature of it, constitute the notion of it ; it is the 
noumenon, the subject, into which they, the phenomena, 
the predicates, are reflected. That the phenomena too 
do not exhaust the noumenon is evident from this, that, 
in other relations, it yet may be found in connexion with 
many additional consequents. It is not necessary, how- 
ever, that the noumenon should be more than this. The 
noumenon is simply the subject of the qualities, it is not 
a mysterious entity apart from the qualities, and cap- 
able of being possessed apart, of being known apart. It is 
absurd to expect to know a thing, not only when quali- 
fied, but when unqualified. In very truth, it is the Posi- 
tivists themselves who make such a mistake as this, who 
suppose that there are under the qualities noumena, 
things in themselves, that may be known otherwise, 
— that is, under other qualities. Mr. Lewes, for one, is 
plainly of belief that we do not know things in them- 
selves, inasmuch as we know them only through 
sensations. What is that but the assumption of 
unknown noumena, and does it at all mend the 
matter to say, Yes, but we will not speak of them ? 
How different Hegel, who was one of the first to ex- 
plode such an absurdity as an unqualified noumenon. 
To Hegel there was but one noumenon, and all else was 
but its phenomena, though, as it were, amongst the very 
phenomena, there were reflexions of the noumenon, 
the subject itself, on various stages. It is worth while 
considering that the conception of a sum, a group, an 



458 ANNO TA TIONS. 

aggregate of phenomena, is inadequate to fact. There 
exists 4 no such sum, group, or aggregate in nature. 
Consider a crystal of blue vitriol, it is blue, it is trans- 
parent, it is acrid, it is hard, it is smooth. But you 
cannot say of it that it has one quality here and another 
there. No, where one quality is, there also are all the 
others, let them be as numerous as they may. Its 
acridity cannot be separated from its transparency, 
wherever it is transparent, it is also acrid wherever 
acrid, it is also transparent, etc. So with all the other 
qualities : they mutually interpenetrate and pervade 
each other ; they exist all of them in the same spot, in 
a single individual or indivisible point. That point, 
then, to which the qualities are referred, is an inside to 
their outside. This point, indeed, in which all the qua- 
lities coincide and are identical, which then is as an 
internal knot colligating them all, can be very well seen 
to occupy the relative place of subject. So is it with 
the entire universe : from a drop of water or a grain of 
sand, up to the sun in the firmament, things are not 
aggregates, but subjects, of qualities. Bare predication 
nowhere exists. Just as it is impossible to find subjects 
un supplied with predicates, so it is impossible to find 
predicates unsupplied with subjects. Grammar is truer 
to philosophy than Comte, and pretends not to convert 
the world into a flight of adjectives. It will not abandon 
its nouns. True it is, at the same time, that a noun 
without adjectives is a non-ens, but not less a non-ens is 
an adjective without a noun. The constitution of things 
is once for all so. The analogy of the ego penetrates 
everywhere, and embraces all. A subjectivity without 
a constituent objectivity were zero, but an objectivity 
without a sublating subjectivity were, at bottom, equally 
absurd. The proposal of Comte, then, to know pheno- 
mena only, is simply impracticable. How can we pos- 
sibly know nothing but outsides ? No phenomenon but 
is itself, as said, only one-half of a relation, nor exists 
without its complementing and realizing other, the 
noumenon. Not that it follows, however, as has also 
been said, that this noumenon is some concealed and 
mysterious special entity, capable, perhaps, of being 
taken out, and looked at for itself. Such irrational and 
absurd imaginations we have only to impute to ourselves. 
Hegel, at all events, has not the slightest intention of 
erecting, as Mr. Mill seems to fancy, * a mere creation of 



8UPPLEMENTA RY NO TES. 459 

the mind into a test or norma of external truth.' For 
his part, indeed, Hegel is peculiarly opposed to the as- 
sumption of occult forces ; he quotes Newton, as (with 
the approbation of Mr. Mill) Reid does, in reprobation of 
the assumption of attraction and repulsion as physical 
forces ; and even blames him for having been untrue to 
this his own requisition. Still, nevertheless, the demand 
that we should confine our attention to abstract self- 
identical outsides belongs not to Hegel. Abstract im- 
mediacy, apart from evolution and inner determinateness, 
is not to him knowledge. What knowledge would there 
be, indeed, were we restricted to the bare smell, taste, 
colour, sound, or feel, then and there present, without 
the impregnation of Vermittelung ? Nay, is not the 
Tery attitude that follows from the demand dangerous 
to humanity ? To empty ourselves of all within, to rise 
to the mere surface, and spread ourselves there, thin, 
clear, an outside merely ; is it not this — surface, mere 
surface — that breeds that sufficient look so offensive in 
Mr. Buckle ? No, metaphysics and religion cannot be 
banished ; for they are in very truth essential humanity 
itself. Mr. Mill himself asserts the one to be necessary, 
and does not reject the other. No less indeed than em- 
pirical science, they must always be cultivated. Without 
them what idle, shallow acquirement would not this 
science itself become ! Nay, even in a linguistic point 
of view, what would this science become if in description 
of it we were required to banish all metaphorical speech, 
if attractions, and repulsions, and affinities, were all pro- 
scribed? External phenomena can hardly ever be repro- 
duced to thought unless in the language of the Vorstellung. 
As to that, indeed, if it were only the Vorstellung that 
the Positivists resisted, and if in its place they were only 
minded to substitute the Begriff, something like a show of 
reason would not be absent. But there is even to be no 
Begriff; no, there is to be nothing but ■ the naif repro- 
duction of the phenomenon as the reason for itself.' So, 
then, we are to have but a Chinese world of miscellaneous 
self- identities, with no possible law at last — naive self -iden- 
tical reproduction could have no other ultimate result — 
but Mr. Buckle's ■ important' law of averages ! But this 
is impossible, this is not the truth, all is reflected, repro- 
duction there is none, change is the rule. In all our in • 
quiries we still seek, indeed, the dpxv of the Ionics ; we still 
apply the mathematics of the Pythagoreans; we still desire 



460 ANNOTATIONS. 

to refer the multiplicity of existence to a single life ; we still 
see that unity, however, with Heraclitus, to be movement, 
perpetual affirmation through perpetual negation ; we still 
name, with Anaxagoras, this unity Nous too ; and we 
still seek with Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle to re- 
solve this Nous into its constituent ideas, leaving a theo- 
retical and practical system of knowledge for all the 
generations of men. So far, then, as it were not an in- 
vestigation of effects and counter-effects, the Comtian 
phenomenal inquiry would vanish into mere phraseology. 
It is to be admitted at the same time that explanation by 
such categories as causality and reciprocity is confined 
only to the physical field, and that final explanation must 
resort to a higher principle. This final method, however, 
remains as yet shut up in the books of a single individual, 
and cannot find exposition here. 

Such, then, is the result of our analysis of the merits 
that are claimed for M. Comte. It is impossible to attri- 
bute value, or even originality, to any of them. If 
ninety-nine people out of the hundred, asked to examine 
a child in geography, grammar, arithmetic, Latin, French, 
etc., would say, Let us begin with the most elementary 
branches, what pretence is there for claiming for Comte 
any unusual merit in resorting to so common and natural 
an expedient, so poorly and imperfectly applied too ? 
His so-called law of evolution, again, exists not as named 
and considered by him, and is but a fragmentary reflexion 
— where it has any truth, as when it asserts philosophy 
to be preceded by mythology, monotheism by polythe- 
ism, fetichism, etc. — from the vast generalizations of 
Hegel. His principle, lastly, of restriction to phenomena 
is but the finicality of formalism itself, and tends to 
make us walk on air, while we are emptied of the filling 
of our concrete humanity. But neither things nor 
ourselves, fortunately, are convertible into mere out- 
sides. 

Besides the main merits of M. Comte, however, there 
are other particular ones which now demand a word. In 
relation to his arrangement of the sciences, for example, 
there is not only his * Logic ' of these, but his creation of 
an alleged new science, that of Sociology ; while, in re- 
lation to his law of evolution, there is its application into 
a Philosophy of History. On the first head, unfortun- 
ately, Mr. Mill, though he finds here M. Comte's very 
greatest achievement, does not enable us to say much. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 461 

We conclude, however, that what it involves is no Logic 
of the sciences in an Hegelian sense, but an enlightened 
generalization of the resources of empirical investigation 
in a Baconian sense. We may cordially allow every re- 
lative merit claimed without prejudice to our general 
position. As regards Sociology again, it will be found, 
as Mr. Mill admits, that the only important part of this 
alleged new science must, under the name of Statics, be 
resigned to Aristotle and others, while that part of it 
that is named Dynamics seems to refer to little more 
than the already discussed law of evolution. How M. 
Comte was led to a different treatment here (referring to 
man historically, and not psychologically) will readily 
appear by looking to his principle. How could he get 
the point of view of bare phenomena and bare rela- 
tions otherwise ? From any other point of view man 
was too noumenal a being to suit his objects. As regards, 
lastly, the philosophy of history, Mr. Mill, to whom this 
is Comte's second greatest achievement, supplies us with 
more information. Nevertheless, though the relative 
survey of historical facts contain much, doubtless, that is 
enlightened, ingenious, and interesting, we gather from it 
no reason to alter the main conclusion. Rather we see 
in it much to confirm it. The method, for example, is 
plainly that of ordinary ralsonnement : with a probable 
here and a. natural there, the hardest facts are expected to 
resolve themselves and flow for us. On the whole, how- 
ever, we may allow the merits claimed for M. Comte 
with reference to all the heads here without departing 
from our general position. That Comte was a man 
of ability and acquirement there is no wish to deny. 
Mathematical and scientific accomplishments he certainly 
possessed ; and many excellent ideas, many large, liberal, 
tolerant views, he mii3t be cordially acknowledged to 
express in detail. Still, nevertheless, even in Mr. 
Mill's eyes the negative of Comte must be named a large 
one. One-half of the work of Comte he seems, indeed, 
totally to reject, while in the other half he certainly finds 
faults enow. He signalizes deficiency, incompleteness, 
unsuccess, in the classification of the sciences, failures no 
less in the institution of Sociology, and many errors of 
detail with regard to the law of evolution, while he dis- 
putes his originality in regard to the very principle of 
Positivism. Both Mr. Mill and Mr. Lewes find further 
much in M. Comte generally that is exaggerated, inaccu- 



462 ANNOTA TIONS. 

rate, extravagant, arbitrary, absurd, and ridisiilous, and 
with this, what is said of his life and character seems very 
excellently to cohere. He wa -s a delicate lad, that stood 
apart from the games of his comrades ; but insurgent and 
indocile, he tired out his teachers by his pertinacity of argu- 
mentativeness and egotism. His married life was a single 
scene of French bickering. Madame did not understand 
the cordes intimes of Monsieur, nor Monsieur Madame' s. 
Egotism is always unequally yoked. It may appear 
cruel to allude to Combe's actual attacks of insanity, but 
they are still elements in the calculation. Lastly, we 
may refer to his exquisitely French Platonic passion for 
Madame de Vaux, that ended in his exaltation into the 
intensely self-confident Pontiff of an extravagant and 
ridiculous new religion, with its stupid catechisms, calen- 
dars, and what not. As is evident, we have only space 
to indicate, but whoever will take the trouble to read 
what Mr. Mill and Mr. Lewes write of Comte, will 
find all that is indicated amply illustrated and con- 
firmed. 

Professor Ferrier quotes Mr. Morell to this effect : — 
'No one, for example, who compares the philosophic 
method of Schelling with the "Philosophic positive" of 
Auguste Comte, can have the slightest hesitation as to 
the source from which the latter virtually sprang.' 
Comte's fundamental idea is then asserted to be ' precisely 
the same as that of Schelling,' in whom is found also ' the 
whole conception of the affiliation of the sciences in 
the order of their relative simplicity, and the expansion 
of the same law of development so as to include the ex- 
position of human nature and the course of social pro- 
gress.' These assertions of Mr. Morell are perhaps too 
sweeping, but there can be no doubt that in the Germans 
who preceded M. Comte much matter is to be found 
which might have proved suggestive to him. We have 
already seen how analogous to the triplets of Hegel were 
even the fundamental triplets of Comte, Theology, Philo- 
sophy, Positivism; Fetichism, Polytheism, Monotheism, 
etc. ; but many other Hegelian indications are not want- 
ing even in the short summary of Mr. Mill. Here, for 
example, are a few eminently Hegelian traits: — 'The 
human beings themselves, on the laws of whose nature 
the facts of history depend, are not abstract or universal, 
but historical human beings, already shaped, and made 
what they are, by human society :' 6 the vulgar mode of 



S UPPLEMENTA R Y A T TES. 4G3 

using history, by looking in it for parallel cases, as if any 
cases were parallel ;' 'the state of every part of the 
social whole at any time, is intimately connected with 
the contemporaneous state of all the others ; religious 
belief, philosophy, science, the fine arts, the industrial 
arts, commerce, navigation, government, all are in close 
natural dependence,' etc. ; ' M. Comte confines himself to 
the main stream of human progress, looking only at the 
races and nations that led the van, and regarding as the 
successors of a people not their actual descendants^ but those 
vjho took up the thread of progress after them /' * the vul- 
gar mistake of supposing that the course of history has 
no tendencies of its own, and that great events usually 
proceed from small causes/ etc. etc. Then with Comte 
as with Hegel, the main object of philosophy at present 
is a reconstruction of human society, and on those objec- 
tive principles, too, which are not always pleasing to the 
rather negatively and wholly subjectively disposed rela- 
tivists, such as Mr. Mill and Mr. Grote. Thus the 
teaching of Comte on the family, women, marriage, 
etc., is essentially the same as that of Hegel, and in its 
objective necessity all but directly opposed to the sub- 
jective freedom of the Aufklarung. Then Comte plainly 
6ees and reprobates the modern atomism of which we hear 
so much in Hegel, and is quite as anxious as he to co- 
articulate it again under the universal. He talks of the 
great productions of art which we might expect from 
such objective reconstruction, 'when one harmonious 
vein of sentiment shall once more thrill through the 
whole of society, as in the days of Homer, of ^Eschylus, 
of Phidias, and even of Dante.' It is admirably charac- 
teristic also of the German influence on Comte that he is 
wholly opposed to what is ' merely negative and destruc- 
tive,' and for that reason excludes from the seats of 
honour the philosophes of the French Aufklarung. Many 
other Hegelian analogies in Comte will be found at 
pp. 379-382 of Mr. Mill's essay. In short, when we 
consider that Comte's titles to fame consist in his 
classification and logic of the sciences, in his socio- 
logical generalizations, and historical analysis, we have 
no difficulty in deciding that the praises in these 
references, so copiously heaped on Comte as the first 
and only, will yet in the end be transferred to the 
entire quarry of these and a thousand completer ex- 
cellences more — Hegel. Comtianism, in fact, bears to 



464 ANNOTATIONS. 

Hegelianism a relation very similar to that of Mahome* 
tanism to Christianity. Rapid as is the spread of the 
one when compared with the other, its reign, neverthe- 
less, will, in view of its incomplete, flushed, fragmentary 
nature, prove but short-lived and partial. Nor need we 
regret its advent in England : it will always prove intro- 
ductory, and we have nothing to fear from it, now that 
its atheism and materialism have been by Mr. Mill 
almost formally withdrawn. That a knowledge of Comte 
should precede a knowledge of the earlier Hegel, cannot 
in the circumstances surprise. Comte evidently writes 
heavily, but he writes at the same time in French, and 
exoterically. Even to his own countrymen, Hegel, for 
the most part, remains still a sealed book. Comtianism 
will probably be in full leaf in England when Hegelianism 
has done little more than broken ground. Hegel, how- 
ever, is all that Comte only aims at, and it is time that 
he should be known. How one shivers for their own 
shame, when one hears, in reference to Hegel, the crude 
propos of one's own superiors — Mr. Mill and Mr. Lewes ! 
These we have not space to exemplify. Mr. Mill, we 
may say, however, talks somewhere of Germany making 
convulsive efforts to wrest itself from the groove of the 
false metaphysical method : are we then in advance of 
Germany ? is Germany in any respect behind us ? Is 
not the truth rather this, that at this moment Germany 
leads the whole world even in empirical science ? Can 
any empirical science be named, indeed, for which Ger- 
many writes not the text-books ? Is it not the dis- 
coveries of her inquirers that are alone bruited among us ? 
And to what is this superiority owing ? Why, to 
nothing else than the superior faculties, the superior 
ideas, and the superior terms, which have resulted from 
the hard discipline of German philosophy. Mr. Mill 
talks too as if Hegel were an example of metaphysics, as 
this term is understood by Comte ; and at the same time 
seems, with Mr. Lewes, to regard his method as subjec- 
tive and a priori. There cannot be a greater mistake ; 
nay, the reverse is the truth, and Herbart even reproaches 
Hegel with empiricism. As said, the latter is as adverse 
as Comte himself to the impregnation of nature and the 
things of nature with metaphysical creatures : very far from 
that, he would reduce all to the simple notion. His method 
is not properly named a priori, however. No, if syn- 
thetic, it is no less analytic, and has always empirical 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 465 

fact below it. It may be described, indeed, as the ex- 
haustive deduction of a single, actually existent principle 
that has been inductively acquired. The preceding induc- 
tion is but superseded by the universality of the deduc- 
tion ; or to attain the analysis, we have but to reverse 
the synthesis. The peculiar objective analysis, however, 
that conducts and, in completeness and correctness, 
guarantees the deduction, is, in fact, the foundation of a 
new method, which yet awaits, I may say, verification, 
and it were much to be wished that the faculty of Mr. 
Mill were available here. In the meantime, we may say 
this : Hegel, all consideration of his principle and method 
apart, has produced on all human interests, theoretical, 
practical, and aesthetic, a body of generalized knowledge, 
which, for comprehensiveness and accuracy, for power 
of penetration and power of reduction, has never been 
approached. Nor, after Kant, who, instigated by 
Hume on all the fields, set the example, is this a 
wonder. 

It is impossible here to do any justice to the theme, 
but there is another phase of the Hegelian philosophy to 
which I should like to call the attention of most modern 
philosophers. To Comte, and I suppose almost every- 
body at present, the universe is a vast magazine of un- 
accountable facts. Whence or how they came, these 
facts, we know not ; our business is to inquire into them 
as they are, and adapt ourselves accordingly. This is 
pretty well the position of Mr. Mill. It is not necessary 
to suppose either that things will always remain as they 
are : the relations of things may vary in nature ; they 
may vary, they do vary, in a sociological aspect ; it is 
enough for us, at any time, to know them as they are. 
and follow the consequent expediency. Possibly even 
elsewhere in space, things and relations may be quite? 
different. We must trust our acquired necessities ol 
thought only so long as the facts that led to them re- 
main beneath them ; for any necessity but what habit 
begets on experience exists not. In such a world, then, 
it is the business of society to leave the individual to the 
unfettered exercise of his highest faculties. It is not 
the business of society to dictate to this individual his 
beliefs ; it is a question of the greatest delicacy, indeed, 
if, and how, and how far, it may interfere even to assist 
him ; or it is best, perhaps, not to interfere at all. 
This, as said, is pretty well the position of Mr. Mill ; 



466 ANNOTATIONS. 

and while it contains some elements that do not preclude 
a junction in the end with the results of Hegel, it cer- 
tainly contains others that render such junction for ever 
hopeless. These latter concern what I may call Mr. 
Mill's absolute relativity ; that the nature of things can- 
not be depended on, that it may vary in space, it may 
vary in time, and that we have simply to know it — its 
succession and co -existence of antecedents and conse- 
quents — here and now. If there be in effect, namely, no 
nature of things, that is, no principle of reason that 
underlies and permeates them, or if Mr. Mill's invaria- 
bility of co-existence and succession be one that is valid 
only here and now (and Mr. Mill hardly allows to either 
a validity and breadth coincident with general human 
experience) — if there be no nature, no reason, no neces- 
sary and absolute invariability of the relations of things, 
then, for Mr. Mill any junction with Hegel must for 
ever remain impossible. But, these apart, there are 
other elements in Mr. Mill not hostile to a junction with 
Hegel. Mr. Mill still insists on the thinking of things. 
Now, things and thinking — observe the etymological con- 
nexion — are all that exists. There is nothing but under- 
standing an d sen sation, or thought and sense. Explanation, 
then, which is the need of unity, would reduce the one side 
to the other, and Mr. Mill's thinking of things would have 
precisely this result, were but things in their relations 
supposed ^variable. On that supposition, indeed, such 
thinking could only result in a system of thought which 
would be the true nature of these things, these things 
in truth, or the truth of these things. Now that truth, 
the want of Mr. Mill, is the sole want of Hegel also. 
As it might result to Mr. Mill it were a posterius, 
but this posterius being alone the truth of things, were 
evidently in fact the prius of them. That prius, then, 
however arrived at, is the system of Hegel ; and it 
is to Hegel's attitude here that attention is specially 
invited. That sensible without he believes to be 
identical with this intelligible within : both meet and 
coincide in that systematic and necessary prius, which is 
reason and the system of reason. In fact, the one is 
outside, the other is inside, and reason is the name of 
the whole. Existence, that is, is but the evolution of 
reason. To Hegel, then, there is not in nature, as there 
is to Mr. Lewes, ' a Fatality which must be accepted : * 
that fatality itself he would explain, he would reduce to 



SUPPLEMENTARY NO TES. 467 

reason. It is with the same thought in his mind as Mr, 
Lewes that Mr. Mill says : ' If the universe had a begin- 
ning, its beginning by the very conditions of the case, 
was supernatural ; the laws of nature cannot account for 
their own origin. ' The arbitrariness, the caprice which 
Mr. Mill feigns here as the origin of things is precisely 
what Hegel resists : necessity of reason that origin must 
have been, place it where you may. Hegel, in short, 
believes — with all its differences before him — in the iden- 
tity (unity) of reason, and, so believing, he has subjected 
all things to the test of reason, and has exhibited to us 
for result, not only the philosophy of the universe as in 
space, but the philosophy of the universe as in time also. 
From which last element it is, in particular, that the in- 
terests of natural and revealed religion are the closing 
verities of the entire system. But this must suffice. 

[Since writing the above with reference to Comte, I 
have had an opportunity of consulting the six volumes of 
his Cours de Philosophie Positive. I have said (p. 464) 
'Comte evidently writes heavily.' This is the only 
phrase I would, on the whole, withdraw. M. Comte 
certainly indulges in sentences that, for a Frenchman, 
are sometimes both loaded and long; nevertheless, his 
works must be pronounced throughout lucid. For the 
rest, I am disposed, in general, to stand by the original 
finding. As we have seen, Mr. Mill and Mr. Lewes 
place the merit of M. Comte in what we may call his 
form — in his classification of the sciences, his law des 
trois Mats, and his abstract phenomenalism (positivism), 
namely. In this I cannot agree with them : to me 
Comte's form is valueless, and what value he possesses 
depends on his matter. In regard to the whole of that 
matter, I am not an expert, and will not judge. It is 
for a Sir William Thomson and others to tell us whether 
Comte has made any contributions to Mathematics, 
Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, or not. 
On the merits of M. Comte's additions to a knowledge 
of Sociology, I have already given the opinion of Mr. 
Mill. My own conclusion here is this : — I find M. 
Comte, in the first place, very French. He excites our 
imaginations by the most enormous promises of new 
marvels, unheard of glories ; and, for the most part, like 
the thimblerigger, he only covers a pea. In the second 
place, I should say that M. Comte occupies too individual, 



468 ANNOTATIONS. 

too imperfectly-prepared a place to be able to give us a 
system of Sociology. But, in the third place, I must 
avow, that for the student of the principles of politics at 
present, there are in the physique sociale of M. Comte 
many suggestions of unquestionable importance.] 



II. 

Mr. Lewes } s accusation of Atheism against Hegel. 1 

IN reference to the following paragraph contained in 
the new edition of Mr. Lewes's History of Philosophy 
(vol. ii. p. 545), I wish to correct a mistake, which any 
tyro in general (not necessarily Hegelian) German could 
correct quite as well as myself. This mistake has now 
stood before the world, in the pages of Mr. Lewes, more 
than twenty years ; it is at once singularly iu accurate 
and signally unjust, and it is high time to correct it. 
The paragraph in question runs thus : — 

* Hegel admits the proposition (being and non -being are 
the same) to be somewhat paradoxical, and is fully aware 
of its openness to ridicule ; but he is not a man to be 
scared by a paradox, to be shaken by a sarcasm. He is 
aware that stupid common sense will ask, " Whether it 
is the same if my house, my property, the air I breathe, 
this town, sun, the law, mind, or God, exist or not ? " 
Certainly a very pertinent question ; how does he answer 
it? "In such examples," he says, " particular ends, — 
utility, for instance, — are understood, and then it is asked 
if it is indifferent to me whether these useful things exist 
or not? But, in truth, philosophy is precisely the doc- 
trine which is to free man from innumerable finite aims 
and ends, and to make him so indifferent to them that it 
is really all the same whether such things exist or not." 
Here we trace the Alexandrian influence ; except that 
Plotinus would never have had the audacity to say that 
philosophy was to make us indifferent to whether God 
existed or not ; and it must have been a slip of the pen 
which made Hegel include God in the examples ; a slip 
of the pen, or else " the rigour of his pitiless logic," of 
which his disciples talk.' 

This is a tolerably fair example of the treatment of 
Hegel, not by Mr. Lewes alone, but by everybody else 

1 Already published in the British Controversialist for Nov. 1867, this 
note is retained here, not as properly pertinent now to Mr. Lewes, but 
for its general usefulness. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 469 

who does not understand him. If Hegel is supposed, on 
the grounds alleged, to have said that it was * indifferent 
whether God existed or not/ then there is the same 
authority for supposing him to have said, that it was in- 
different whether law (Becht) existed or not, and whether 
the mind (Geist) existed or not. Had this occurred to 
Mr. Lewes, surely he would have looked again before 
committing himself to so hazardous an assertion ; for 
even to him we may assume it as certain that Hegel 
could not have been indifferent as to whether Becht ex- 
isted or not, or as to whether Geist existed or not. There 
are in Hegel even external placards which assert the 
objective existence of Becht, and the absolute existence 
of Geist, at all events. There is here, then, an anterior 
improbability so strong that of itself it is quite enough to 
refute Mr. Lewes's assertion in advance. It will be only 
fair to Mr. Lewes, however, to allow that — apparently 
at least — there must be some excuse for his mistake ; 
for it is a mistake that has also been committed by A. 
Gratry, Pr6tre de l'Oratoire de rimmaculee Conception,' 
and it is a mistake that, on occasion of this Gratry, has not 
been accurately corrected, even by such a man as Rosen- 
kranz, who, as all the world knows, is the * Hegelianer 
par excellence.' It will clear the issues to quote at once 
from Rosenkranz in reference to M. Gratry's work 
(Logique, Paris, 1855, 2 tomes), as follows : — 

* This French priest wishes to prove, that, according to 
Hegel, philosophy seeks to take from man all interest 
for right, for his soul, nay, for God himself, and reduce 
him to indifference towards these. I. 194, he exclaims, 
" Comprenez-le, nous sommes ici a l'origine m6me de 
l'esprit de sophisme ; disons mieux, nous sommes ici au 
fond de l'abtme, a la naissance de Tesprit des tenebres. 
L'esprit de sophisme est un mot trop faible, qui nomme 
peu son objet ; l'esprit des tenebres est le vrai mot. Ce 
mot the*ologique devient ici rigoureusement philosophique 
et scientifique. L'origine de l'esprit des tenebres est 
done celle-ci : tuer l'ame ; la rendre absolument indiffer- 
ente a l'existence, ou a la non-existence du monde, de la 
justice, de la verite", de l'ame elle-m^me, de Dieu ! Lui 
6ter, comme le dit Hegel, tout intent en ces choses ; la 
delivrer de l'inter6t de la raison pratique dont parle Kant, 
cet int^r&t d'amour pour la justice et pour la verite*, qui 
est, nous l'avons demontr§, le ressort meme du procede" 
dialectique, selon Platon et tous les philosophes. Quand 



470 ANNOTATIONS. 

le ressort est brise\ quand Tame est morte, il n'y a plus 
cle procede dialectique ; la raison pure, isolee, abstraite, 
deracinee, devient de fait, comme le veut Hegel, indiffe>- 
ente a l'Otre et au n6ant, etc." For these fearful conse- 
quences M. Gratry cites from Hegel's Works (vi. 172) 
the following passage : "It needs no great expenditure 
of wit to make the proposition, that being and nothing 
are the same, ridiculous, or rather to bring forward 
absurdities, with the untrue declaration that they are 
consequences and applications of that proposition ; as, 
for example, that it is consequently the same thing, 
whether my house, my means, the air we breathe, this 
town, the sun, right, spirit, God, exist or not. ... In effect, 
philosophy is just this doctrine to free man from an infinite 
number of finite ends and aims, and to make him so indif- 
ferent to them that it is quite the same to him whether 
such things exist or not." M. Gratry translates this pass- 
age, and, at the end of the citation, full of indignation, he 
italicises the words, " qu'il soit absolument indifferent, 
que ces choses soient ou ne soient pas." Every one who 
understands German will be able to refer the words, 
" such things," only to the preceding " number of finite 
ends and aims ;" the priest of the Oratory of the Imma- 
culate Conception understands as amongst these the soul, 
right, God. Are they not the things named directly 
previously? Of course, no one will call finite (mfinite?) 
ends and aims things ; at the same time a certain plau- 
sibility remains, because those objects are mentioned 
shortly before. But does not Hegel himself say, that 
it is an untrue consequence to infer from the proposition of 
the identity of the notions being and nothing, that it is 
quite the same whether the sun, right, spirit, God, exist 
or not ? Does he not expressly reject, therefore, the 
consequence which M. Gratry draws in order to secure 
his damnation ? Does not the accusation, then, fall to 
pieces of itself ? But, dear reader, do you not observe 
these points in the midst of M. Gratry's citation from 
Hegel ? What must they denote ? An omission. And 
in Hegel how is the omission supplied ? Thus : "In 
such examples there are assumed partly particular ends, 
as the use, perhaps, which something has for me, and 
then it is asked if it is indifferent to me whether what is 
useful exist or not." Here, then, now do we not at last 
see how it is that Hegel comes to speak of finite ends 
and aims, towards the existence or non-existence of which 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 471 

philosophy has to render humanity indifferent? Why 
has M. Gratry desired to exclude that sentence ? Evi- 
dently because otherwise he would not have been able to 
draw his inferences ; because he as a priest of the Christian 
religion, would have been obliged to remember that it 
belongs to the Christian also to raise himself above the 
finitude of the mere useful, and to exclaim with the Holy 
Singer, " If I have thee, Lord, what need I ask more of 
heaven or earth ! " Were such an accusation to be made 
in ordinary life, and in another sphere, it would certainly 
be branded as falsehood and calumny. ■ — (Rosenkranz, 
Metaphysilc, pref., xxiii.) 

The agreement, then, between M. Gratry and Mr. 
Lewes is so striking, that they probably both owe their 
information to the same source, — possibly M. Ott. I am 
not satisfied with the solution of Rosenkranz, however, 
and think he might have explained the matter much more 
easily and convincingly, had he but looked more closely 
at his text. Let the reader observe the quotation from 
Hegel, the beginniDg of which runs, ' In such examples 
there are assumed partly (zum theil) particular ends, as 
the use, perhaps,* etc. Now, it is the touch of that partly 
that shall resolve for us the whole difficulty. Under the 
regimen of that partly, namely, there is included all that 
concerns finite references, while under the regimen of a 
second partly (zum theil) there is included all that con- 
cerns infinite references. Nay, the termination of the 
discussion of the finite, and the transition to that of the 
infinite references are made unescapably prominent by a 
dash. Of the objects under the regimen of the second 
partly, Hegel now speaks thus : ■ Partly, however, it is 
ends essential in themselves, absolute existences and 
ideas, which are assumed under tha category of being or 
non-being; such concrete objects are something quite 
else than only existent or non-existent, etc., . . . these 
categories are quite inadequate to the nature of such 
objects, etc.' There can be no doubt, then, that Hegel 
perfectly well knew the nature of his own examples, 
discussing them under two categories, of which the 
former applied to finite ends and aims, such as 'my 
house,' ' my means,' etc., and the latter only to * essential 
aims,' 'absolute existences and ideas,' such as 'right,' 
' soul,' ' God.' Any just reader, then, that looked only to 
the spirit of the passage, would, as Rosenkranz argues, 
never for a moment have imagined that Hegel meant to 



472 ANNOTATIONS. 

enumerate law, the soul, God, as among those things 
which philosophy was to render us indifferent to. But 
Hegel, as Bosenkranz has failed to point out, does not 
trust himself to correctness of spirit and kindly inter- 
pretation on the part of his reader; no, by absolute 
accuracy of letter, he renders himself independent of his 
reader, and sets misconstruction at defiance. What has 
been said is probably enough ; but luckily we have a 
light wholly irresistible in the passage itself, as it occurs 
in the first edition of the ' En cyclopaedic ' This passage 
I shall now translate, and so set the matter definitively 
beyond dispute. In reference to the question, then, 
1 whether it is the same if my house, my property, the 
air I breathe, this town, sun, the law, mind, or God, 
exist or not,' we are to understand the answer of Hegel 
in his first edition to run thus : — 

' Here, then, are assumed partly (zum theil) particular 
ends, as the use which something has for me, and then it 
is asked whether it is indifferent to me that what is useful 
should exist or not I In effect philosophy is just this 
doctrine, to free man from an infinite number of finite 
ends and aims, and render him so indifferent to them, 
that it is quite the same to him whether such things 
exist or not. Further, as regards the air, sun, or law, 
God, it is mere want of thought to consider such essential 
ends, absolute existences and ideas, under the category oj 
being. Such concrete objects are something quite else than 
only existent or non-existent. Meagre abstractions, like 
being and nothing, — and they are, being but the categories 
of the beginning, the most meagre abstractions possible, 
— are inadequate to express the nature of the objects 
alluded to.' 

One sees that the important word for the right under- 
standing of the passage from Hegel is that partly, which 
quite trenchantly and unmistakably discriminates between 
essential and inessential existences ; the essential exist- 
ences being not only God, law, the soul, etc., but even 
(only in the first edition, however) the sun and the air. 
What one likes least in Mr. Lewes, then, is that he has 
omitted this all-important partly. By this omission he 
has certainly rendered himself as obnoxious to all the 
hard things said by Eosenkranz as the priest of the 
immaculate conception himself. We, however, shall not 
say these hard things of Mr. Lewes ; Mr. Lewes is a 
perfectly open, unaffected gentleman, and one of the 



SUPPLEMENT A RY NO TES. 473 

clearest, most widely-informed, and consequently use- 
fulest writers whom we now possess ; and we will simply 
believe that he failed to perceive the importance of the 
word, and, so failing, omitted it for the sake of the 
greater simplicity and clearness of the sentence. 

In conclusion, when it i3 considered that what is con- 
cerned is an accusation of such a doctrine as atheism, 
by such a man as Mr. Lewes, against such a man as Hegel, 
and in a work that has gone through three editions, and 
been for more than twenty years, probably, the most 
popular English history of philosophy, perhaps I shall be 
held excused for seeking in this manner to contradict and 
correct. For the rest, as has been demonstrated already, 
Hegel is not only a Theist, but a Christian. 

III. 

Pantheism and Paganism. 

THE heresy of the German critics is, perhaps, quite as 
active in England at present as the positivism of 
Comte, and may excuse a word. So far as I know, however, 
this heresy is not represented here by any direct disciple 
of the school, but only by one or two men of genius y who 
seem to draw their inspiration from the semi-French 
Heine and the wholly French Hugo. The leading trait 
of these Englishmen is an air of brusque bravery that 
seems to say, ' Pah ! it is cowardly to whine over our lost 
immortality, let us go out into the air and enjoy life!' 
It will be enough here, however, to mention them and 
this ; it is a phase of mind sufficiently incomplex, and 
may be left for the present to take on of itself the inevi- 
table 'pale cast of thought.' I shall confine myself to a 
few remarks on the German movement in which they 
indirectly root. Pantheism and Paganism are the best 
terms for it. All the essentials of religion, namely, are 
for it void : personal God, there is none ; immortality, 
there is none. What is, is the idea — thought that has 
realized itself in nature and in man, and so realizes itself 
for ever. There is one grand life, that, dumb, yet speaks ; 
that has its accents in the perishable individual; that, 
nought, is all. It is this aloue we are to see and 
honour! it is for this we are cheerfully to live, it 
is for this we are cheerfully to die, secure in this that 
it must live, and that in our own death, loss there is 



474 ANNOTATIONS. 

none, for it alone is truth. This, so far as I can make it 
out, is what may be called the religious core of the Ger- 
man critics. This, however, is not their true support. 
Their true support, rather, is the simple conviction of 
subjective superiority, and the consequent equally sim- 
ple spirit of battle. What could support a Diderot or a 
D'Holbach but indignation at the darkness y at the miser- 
able ignorance of those around them, and the resolution 
to dispel it ? As with them, so with the heretical Ger- 
man critics. Blind to all but their propagandism, they 
rush to the front to enlighten %is; they never linger be- 
hind to enlighten themselves. It might be worth their 
while, however, to put to themselves the question, Is 
' Humanismus,' is humanity, is man at all possible without 
a belief in the immortality of the soul and the existence 
of God ? Truly, we are on the brink of the most fearful 
crisis in the whole world's history. Knowledge is to be 
all in all. And what is that knowledge ? Why, that a3 
water is contained in a sponge, thought is contained in 
the material universe and perpetually recreates it ! 
Man's duty is to know this, and, knowing this, to work. 
That is all : let the German critics have their own way, 
and I do not see anything else they could add. I do not 
know that they could add science even ; for anything 
Baconian they declare to be beneath them. Then work ? 
Millions of the most pallid and undeniable slaves of both 
sexes, shut up in sickly factories and bakeries for the 
world's back and the world's belly, with no consolation 
but that so they keep alive — the Idea ! This idea is 
simply monstrous — a Moloch of the most insatiable maw. 
Result there can be none — unless Europeans are capable 
of returning to an Egyptian bondage under a Pharaoh 
again — but the suicide of the race. It is really scarcely 
intelligible that a Euge should be eloquent about science 
and philosophy, and liberty and humanity, and all for 
service under a blind, dumb, invisible idol, whose only 
function is to victimize everything, to gorge upon all. 
If it is not a person, but only a something that is to go 
on living and growing in this world, then it is of no con- 
sequence whether that something be called ideal or be 
called material. It is but a thing under either name ; 
and that its necessary realization should only be in suc- 
cessive generations of millions of individual men makes 
the matter not a whit better, conceive them even working 
perfectly. 



8 UPPL EM EXT A R Y NO TES. 475 

The great source of this despair of the German critics 
— for it is evidently but despair, and the whitest that 
ever fell — -is, as I have said already, not Hegel, but only 
their own obstinately self-willed rejection of Hegel. 
Hegel, himself, has, in the most open manner, professing 
adhesion to an enlightened and progressive conservatism 
in politics, conducted his whole system into the sanctuary 
of the Christian Religion. ZSTor is this denied ; it is only 
rejected. But why should it be rejected? To me it 
appears that it is precisely this part of his work that should 
evoke for Hegel a heartfelt and irresistible to triumphe ! 
Xo doubt, in many respects, Hegel's Logic is his capital 
achievement It is to be borne in mind, however, that, 
though containing much that is of material importance, 
it is still principally formal. Its first note, after all is 
said, will never ring quite true ; existence of some kind 
and existence of no kind are not the same, even should we 
see that existence of no kind is a non-ens, and not in 
rerum nature, and consequently that, so far as matter 
[Inhalt) is concerned, it is the same supposition, the 
same ultimate generalization that existence of any kind, 
existence in general, is. But if the start be but an 
artifice and a convenience, is it at all ascertained yet 
that the means of progress, the dialectic, is in any re- 
spect better ? I confess, for my part, that I have more 
satisfaction in the Philosophy of the Spirit, in the Moral 
and Political Philosophy, and in the History of Philo- 
sophy than in the Logic. ZSTay, of the Logic itself, its 
value to me consists only in its ministrations to spiritu- 
alism. I cannot give myself up simpliciter to the Ent- 
u'kkelung, and I distrust the transcendental rapture with 
which many Germans discuss both Plato and Hegel in 
this connexion. The former's idea, it will be remem- 
bered, for example, I have described on the whole as 
only the formal universal {das Formell-Allgemeine), only a 
generic notion, though it may be admitted that there are 
in Plato partial efforts towards a single plastic element or 
energy, a single all of thought, whose distinctions were 
constitutive pairs of fluent notions. Then, as said, the 
success of the Logic, which would precisely realize and 
complete these efforts of Plato, is not yet certain, and 
the general principle remains still to be verified. Here, 
however, it is that Hegel, if ever anywhere, is unduly 
influenced by the ancients, and lays a misleading stress 
on the abstract universal. Not but that he is in a mea- 



476 ANNOTATIONS. 

sure compelled to this by the very nature of the abstract 
logical sphere in which for the time he moves. Concrete 
spirit, nevertheless, must be seen to be something more 
than abstract logic ; which latter, indeed, is only valuable 
as leading to the former. To transfix matter with logical 
categories till it disappears (should that be possible), is 
not to me a great work in itself, as it is to Huge, but in 
its consequences — in its support, that is, to all the great 
interests of religion. Neither gods nor men are in very 
truth logical categories. And so it is, that should the 
Logic, or any other part of the work of Hegel fail us here, 
we are not, for a moment, to suppose that our hopes are 
— therefore — at term. No man is final ; neither Plato, 
nor Aristotle, nor Kant, nor Hegel. Existence is here 
within us, there without us, for us as it was for them : 
we too may turn to read the countenance of our common 
mother. An idealism that only, so to speak, strikes seed- 
matter into seed-thought, were but materialism; could even 
such materialism as this, then, be proved of Kant and Hegel, 
we should not allow it to appal us. No ; let the pre- 
tensions of these men be what they may, let their dark- 
nesses be what they may, we shall never allow the former 
to declare the latter final. But, happily, there is no need 
for this ; Kant and Hegel are the very truest supports 
that philosophy has ever yet extended to the religious 
interests of humanity. Pantheism and Paganism, then, 
are not, on any account, terrors to us, and most sincerely 
do we wish the German critics a prosperous deliverance 
from the blank whiteness of their own most horrible 
despair. 



INDEX. 



Abbt, 208. 

Abelard, 146. 

Absolute, 65, 138, 139, 315, 316, 323, 
363, 368, 386, 433, 442, 

Abstract, 365, 366. 

Abstraction, 6, 11, 15. 

Academics, 101. 

Academy, 93, 94, 139. 

Accident, 329. 

Achilles (the), 19, 364, 365, 366. 

Acroamatic, 95. 

Actuality, 101, 102, 108, 109, 328, 365, 
399, 400. 

Actus Purus, 198. 

Adaptation, 245. 

iEnesidemus. 135, 137. 

Esthetic (Transcendental), 218, 220. 

^Esthetics, 2S5, 297. 

Agreeable (the), 242. 

Agrippa, 137. 

Air, 11, 376, 379, 396. 

Albertus Magnus, 349. 

Alcibiades, 44. 

Alcibiades (the), 63. 

Alexander (the Great), 98, 121, 131, 143. 

Altenstein, 258. 

America, 150. 

Ammonius Saccas, 138. 

Amyntas, 94. 

Analogies of experience, 224. 

Analysis, 7, 350. 

Analytic, aesthetic, 241. 

practical, 233. 

teleological, 244. 

transcendental, 221. 

Anaxagoras, his life, 27 ; relations to 
predecessors, 23 ; his principle of 
vous, 28 ; as close of Pre-Socratic 
Philosophy, 30; Note on, 375-3S0 ; 
mentioned, 4, 8, 26, 39, 111, 351, 352, 
371, 373, 395, 396, 421, 455, 460. 

Anaximander, 10, 351, 354, 453. 

Anaximenes, 10, 21, 351, 352, 354, 453, 
455. 

Anniceris, 56. 



Annotations (these), i$45. 

Anselm, 144, 145, 405, 406. 

Anstoss, 268, 269. 

Anthropology, 335, 336. 

Anthropomorphism, 16, 81. 

Anticipations of sensation, 224. 

Antigonus, 123. 

Antinomies, 75 ; Kant's, 213, 227 ; 2*28; 
Zeno's, 363, 364. 

Antiphon, 35. 

Antisthenes, 53-55. 

Antithesis, 20, 21, 74, 76, 163, 360. 

Anytus, 43, 44. 

Apathy, 135, 137. 

Apodictic, 100. 

Apologists, 144. 

Aporias, 101, 423. 

Appearances, 212, 220. 326. 

A priori, 71, 210, 217-226. 

Arabians (the), 145. 

Arcesilaus, 136. 

'Ap X 7j, 10. 

Archelaus, 39, 351. 

Architectonic, 450, 451. 

Architecture, 342. 

Archytas, 12. 

Aristippus, 53, 55, 56, 132. 

Ariston, 58. 

Aristophanes, 37, 40, 42, 43, 44. 

Aristotle, his life and writings, 94; 
character and classification of his 
philosophy, 95 ; his Logic and Meta- 
physics, 98 ; his critique of Plato, 
101 ; his four causes and the relation 
of form and matter, 105 ; potentiality 
and actuality. 108 ; the absolute, 
divine spirit, 109 ; the Physics, 111 ; 
the Ethics, 115 ; the summum bo- 
num, 116 ; notion of virtue, 118 ; 
the State, 119 ; the Peripatetic 
school, 120 ; Transition to the Post- 
Aristotelian Philosophy, 120 ; Note 
on, 399-402 ; mentioned, 4, 5, 6, 9, 12, 
13, 17, 19, 21, 27, 29, 39, 48, 50, 51, 
55, 61, 68, 77, 93, 125, 130, 131, 183, 



478 



INDEX. 



134, 138, 145, 147, 148, 194, 205, 221, 

252, 323, 351, 353, 355, 356, 357, 358, 

361, 365, 368, 369, 370-380, 393, 453, 

460, 461, 476. 
Arrow (the flying), 19. 
Art, 341, 342. 
Aspects (contingent), 282. 
Assistance (the divine), 164. 
Association, 183. 
Ast 346. 
Atheism, 26, 188, 189, 100, 191, 192, 202, 

468-473. 
Athens, 27. 
Atoms, 25, 283. 
Atomistic, 7. 
Atomists, its founders, 25 ; the atoms, 

25 ; the plenum and the vacuum, 25 ; 

necessity, 26; their position, 26; 

Note on, 373 ; mentioned, 4, 7, 8, 22, 

28, 352, 396. 
Attic prose, 35. 
Attraction, 325. 

Attribute, 171, 172, 173, 408, 433. 
Aufklarung, 8, 31, 42, 346, 370, 381, 382, 

394, 395, 396, 411, 437, 463. 
Autonomous, 233. 
Averroes, 145. 
Avicenna, 145. 
Axioms of Intuition, 224. 

Bacon, 150-153, 156, 381, 403, 404, 411, 

453, 464. 
Banquet (the), 39, 41, 42, 67. 
Bardili, 247. 
Basedow, 208. 
Baumeister, 207. 
Baumgarten, 207. 
Bayle, 371. 
Beattie, 184. 
Beauty, 241, 425. 
Beck, 247. 
Becker, 310. 
Becoming, 7, 19-23, 66, 72, 324, 360, 371, 

396 398 
Beent, Pref., 16, 17, 359. 
Begriff, 50, 353. See also Notion. 
Being, 7, 14-19, 22, 23, 26, 65, 72-74, 98, 

324, 347, 359, 360-367, 371, 396,398, 

401, 406. 
Being-for-self, 325. 
Beings (four classes of), 83. 
Belief, 231, 247, 251. 
Berkeley, 193, 201-203, 389, 415, 417-422. 
Bessarion, 148. 
Bilfinger, 207. 
Bindegewebe, 359. 

Bohm, 153-156, 194, 287, 306, 404, 428. 
Books, 393. 
Bouterweck, 247. 
Bow and Lyre, 21. 
Brandis, 345, 346, 357, 381. 
Braniss, 346. 
Brown (Bishop), 181, 415. 



Brown (Thomas), 416, 428. 

Brucker, 346. 

Bruno, 152, 153. 

Buckle, 363, 381, 382, 394, 405, 436, 456, 

459. 
Buhle, 346. 
Butler (Bishop), 415. 
Butler's Lectures, 345, 346, 351, 357, 



Calculus (the), 417. 

Campanella, 152. 

Canonic, 131. 

Cardan, 152. 

Carlyle, 416, 420. 

Carneades, 137. 

Categories, 99, 100, 212, 221, 280, 323, 

394, 423. 
Categorical Imperative, 214, 233. 
Causality, 182, 183, 205, 212, 224, 266, 

282, 329, 409, 455. 
Causes (Aristotle's four), 105-108. 
Certainty (moral), 231. 
Chalybseus, 346. 
Chance, 26. 
Chaos, 10. 
Charmides, 58. 
Charmides (the), 63. 
Chemism, 331. 
Christianity, 139, 143, 144, 209, 277, 30jt, 

302, 314, 315, 343, 350, 355, 433, 440, 

444, 475. 
Chrysippus, 123, 131. 
Church, 238, 239, 443. 
Cicero, 24, 124, 135, 136, 138, 372. 
Citizen (a good), 441. 
Clarke, 181. 

Classes (in Plato's state), 92. 
Classification, 450, 451, 452. 
Cleanthes, 123, 127. 
Cleon, 42. 
Clouds (the) 40, 42. 
Cogito-sum, 405. 
Cognition, 35, 65, 113, 114, 124, 13t>, 

210, 253, 331, 374, 393, 424. 
Cold, 10, 17. 
Coleridge, 423, 425. 
Columbus, 438. 
Common sense, 184, 418. 
Complexions, 25, 26. 
Composition, 23, 28. 
Comte, 346, 377, 382, 395, 446-467, 468 
Conception, 50, 70, 71, 364, 365, 406. 
Concrete, 365, 366. 
Condensation, 9, 11. 
Condillac, 184, 185, 454. 
Conduct (standard of), 397. 
Consciousness, 163, 284. 
Consequent, 327. 
Constitutive, 231, 240, 245, 348. 
Contingency, 328. 
Continuity, 325, 365, 366. 
Contract, 337. 



INDEX. 



479 



Contradiction, 99, 101, 200, 205, 280, 

327. 
Contraposition, 427. 
Contraries, 10. 
Sontrariety, 20, 21, 327. 
Copernican notion, 216, 415, 423. 
Copernicus, 150. 
Cosinical principles, 140. 
Cosmogony, 82, 306. 
Cosmological, 109, 205, 213, 227. 
Cosmosophy, 350. 
Counterparts, 66, 398. 
Courage, 84. 
Cousin, 310. 
Crantor, 93, 94. 
Crates (the Academic), 93. 
Crates (the Cynic), 123. 
Criterion, 124, 158, 405. 
Critias, 37, 44, 58. 
Criticism, 138, 216, 260, 279. 
Critics (the German), 436, 441, 473-476. 
Critolaus, 137. 
Croesus, 9, 10. 
Cudworth, 415. 

Cynic, 53, 54, 55, 57, 87, 95, 128, 133. 
Cynosarges, 54, 95. 
Cyrenaic, 53, 55, 56, 57, 86, 132, 133. 

D'Alembert, 188 

Damon, 39. 

Darwin, 354. 

Death, 133, 199. 

Deduction, 423. 

Definition, 48, 50, 101. 

Degree, 325. 

Demiurgus, 79, 82, 83. 

Democritus, 25, 132, 283, 372, 373, 374, 
377, 421, 455. 

Demonic element in Socrates, 41. 

Deontology, 129. 

De Quincey, 371. 

Descartes, his life, 156 ; his philosophy, 
157 ; his doubt, 157 ; his proposition, 
157, 158 ; our spiritual nature, 158 ; 
his criterion, 158 ; the idea of God, 
159 ; the veracity of God, 161 ; his 
substances, 161 ; the seat of the soul, 
162 ; his principles recapitulated and 
criticised, 163, 164 ; Note on, 404-407 ; 
mentioned, 144, 150, 165, 166, 167, 168, 
169, 172, 173, 176, 381, 411, 414, 454. 

Design, 8, 81, 241, 245, 279, 372, 373, 
396, 421, 424. 

Deus ex machina, 8, 29, 81, 164, 199. 

Development, 354, 399, 400. 

Diagoras, 26. 

Dialectic, 18, 19, 30, 64, 66-69, 72, 75, 
76, 98, 100, 226, 236, 324, 430-433, 
445, 475. 

Diamond net, 323, 347, 359, 398. 

Diderot, 188-190, 474. 

Difference, 65, 71, 354, 355, 359, 366, 
404, 434. 



Diogenes of Apollonia, 351, 352, 376, 

377, 379. 
Diogenes Laertius, 351, 372. 
Diogenes of Sinope, 54, 55, 364, 368. 
Diogenes the Stoic, 138. 
Dion, 60. 

Dionysius (the elder), 60. 
Dionysius (the younger), 60. 
Dionysodorus, 33. 
Discipline (true), 356. 
Discretion, 325, 365, 366, 
Diversity, 327. 

Divisibility, 365, 369, 370, 371. 
Division (philosophical), 67, 98. 
Dogmatism, 259. 
Donaldson, Dr., 349. 
Dorism, 44, 58. 

Double-entendre (Berkeley's), 418. 
Doubt, 157, 279. 
Dress 356 
Dualism, 15, 19, 80, 87, 121, 125, 138, 

164. 
Duboc, 441. 
Duns Scotus, 145, 349. 
Duties, 129, 272, 273, 274, 397, 410. 
Dynamical sublime, 243. 

Earth, 11, 17. 

East Indies, 150. 

Eclectic, 24, 138, 352, 375. 

Economics, 205. 

Ecstasy, 139. 

Ego, 183, 220, 247, 248, 259-277, 280, 

283, 284, 285, 287, 425. 
Eleatics, 4, 6, 7, 14-19, 22-27, 30, 36, 53, 

57, 62, 64, 67, 73, 75, 357-371, 373, 

396, 398, 399, 400, 453. 
Elements (the four), 23, 82. 
Emanation, 141. 
Emerson, 420. 
Empedocles, 7, 8, 10, 22-24, 25-28, 30, 

372, 373, 375, 376, 379, 396, 453. 
Empirical, 449. 

Empiricism, 125, 152, 153, 187, 210, 258. 
Encyclopaedia, 188. 
Encyclopaedists, 1, 33, 188. 
Engel, 208. 
English (the), 403. 
Enneads, 139. 
Ens, 367. 

Entelechie, 105, 108, 113, 399, 402. 
Epicureanism, 122, 131-134, 135, 138, 

139. 
Epicurus, 57, 131-134. 
Epochs (historical), 5, 6. 
Erasmus, 148. 
Erdmann, Pref., 345, 346, 349, 350-352, 

357, 368, 373, 381, 382, 397, 403, 404, 

407, 408, 411, 413, 414, 416, 446. 
Eristic, 57, 122. 
Eros, 39, 67, 85. 
Eschenmayer, 306. 
Esse-percipi, 202. 



fc80 



INDEX. 



Essence, 326. 

Essential, 326. 

Ethics, 14, 22, 35, 47-52, 55, 66-69, 85-92, 
93, 115-120, 124, 131-134, 205, 285, 444. 

Ethics (Aristotle's), 95. 

Euclid, 53, 56-58, 59. 

Eudsemonism, 55, 210. See also Happi- 
ness, Felicity, Virtue, etc. 

Eudemus, 120. 

Eugene (Prince), 194. 

Euripides, 27, 33, 42. 

Eurytus, 12. 

Euthydemus, 33. 

Euthydemus (the), 37. 

Evil, 126, 133. 

Evolution (Law of), 447, 452. 

Exertion, 328. 

Existence, 328, 359, 434. 

Exoteric, 95. 

Experience, 151, 210, 212, 253, 278, 414, 
415, 416. 

Explanation, 366. 

Explicit, 366. 

Extension, 161, 408, 409. 

External "World, 202. 

Externality, 348. 

Faculties, Kant's three, 217. 

Family (the), 339. 

Fanaticism, Pythagorean, 14. 

Fate of Socrates, 397. 

Fathers (the), 144. 

Fear and Hope, 238. 

Feeling, 247, 251, 285. 

Felicity, 234, 236. 

Female (the), 111. 

Ferguson, 416. 

Ferrier, 345, 346-9, 350, 352, 353, 357, 
360, 371, 372, 416, 421, 427, 462. 

Feuerbach, 436. 

Ficinus, 148. 

Fichte, his life, 255-259 ; his philosophy 
—earlier form, 259-275 ; later form, 
276 ; his practical philosophy, 270 ; 
Note on, 427; mentioned, 220, 247, 
254, 278, 286, 287, 288, 290, 296, 298, 
305, 315, 317, 321, 322, 323, 360, 406, 
420, 432, 444, 445. 

Final Cause, 105-108. 

Fire, 11, 17, 21, 126. 

Flux, perpetual, 20, 30. 

Forberg, 257. 

Force, 328. 

Forces, 23. 

Form, 101, 102, 105-108, 328, 354, 399, 
400. 

Fraser, Professor, 421. 

Frauenstadt, 311. 

Freewill, 233, 336. 

French Revolution, 187. 

Illumination, 187-192. 

Friendship, 133. 

Fries, 247, 346. 



Frogs (the). 42. 

Galileo, 150. 

Garve, 208. 

Gassendi, 158, 405, 411. 

Gedanke, 353. 

Generalization, 397. 

Geology, 333. 

German Philosophy, 404, 420. 

Geulinx, 164-166. 

Gnosology, 259-270. 

Gnostics, 287. 

TvwOi aeavTov, 47. 

God, the notion of, etc., 16, 80, 81, 99, 
101, 109, 110, 111, 125, 126, 142, 154, 
155, 156, 158, 159, 160, 167, 168, 169, 
175, 185, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 198, 
201, 202, 208, 209, 213, 214, 229, 230, 
237, 254, 274, 275, 306-315, 361, 362, 
363, 379, 401, 404-409, 417, 434, 438, 
439, 473-476. 

Gods, their vices, etc., 16, 26, 35, 134. 

Goethe, 257, 355. 

Good (the), 57, 63, 64, 67, 69, 80, 87,115, 
127, 174, 201, 242. 

Gorgias, 33, 36, 53, 377. 

Gorgias (the), 36, 63, 64, 65, 86. 

Gorgonization, 387, 391, 392, 418. 

Graces, the three, of Socrates, 39. 

Gratry, 469. 

Gravity, 332. 

Greece, Fall of, 402. 

Greek Fugitives (the), 148. 

Grimm, 190. 

Grote, Mr., 345, 346, 350-352, 363, 366- 
397, 421, 463. 

Ground, 205, 327. 

Hamann, 247, 420. 

Hamilton, Sir W., 366, 371, 416, 419, 426, 
427. 

Happiness, 55, 64, 67, 86, 116-118, 127, 
135, 172, 175. 

Harmony, the Pre-established, 196-198. 

Hartley, 415. 

Hate, 8, 10, 23. 

Haureau, 349. 

Heart, 84. 

Heaven, 112. 

Hedonism, 57, 86. 

Hedonists, 133. 

Hegel, Transition to, 315 ; his life, 321 ; 
his works and system, 322; the 
Logic, 323 ; doctrine of Being, 324 ; 
of Essence, 326; of the Notion, 
329; philosophy of Nature, 332; 
of Spirit, 334 ; subjective Spirit, 
334; objective Spirit, 336; abso- 
lute Spirit, 341 ; Note on, 429-445 ; 
mentioned, 2, 3, 4, 26, 43, 45, 48, 248 
278, 280, 286, 310, 345-366, 371-375 
377, 379, 381, 382, 385, 387, 397-410 
414, 415, 417, 419, 420, 422, 425, 426 



INDEX. 



481 



427. 446, 449, 450-454, 457, 459, 461- 
468, 473-476. 

Hegesias, 56. 

Heine, 436, 473. 

Hell, 209. 

Helvetius, 186, 187, 190. 

Heraclitus, his historical relation, 19 ; 
his characteristics, 20 ; his principle, 
20 ; fire, 21 ; transition from, 22 ; 
Note on, 371 ; mentioned, 4, 7, 8, 23- 
27, 30, 35, 66, 73, 77, 125, 126, 280, 
350, 357, 371-373, 375, 395, 396, 398, 
399, 400, 455, 460. 

Herbart, his life, 278 ; his philosophy, 
278 ; his basis, 278 ; his procedure, 

279 ; his metaphysics, 279 ; his reals, 

280 ; his psychology, 283 ; his ethics, 
285 ; Note on, 428 ; mentioned, 247, 
360, 428, 464. 

Herder, 247. 
Hermeias, 94, 95. 
Herodotus, 314. 
Herpyllis, 95. 
Hesiod, 9, 16, 91. 
Heteronomous, 234. 
Hippasus, 351. 
Hippias, 33, 36, 37. 
Hippias minor (the), 63. 
Hippo, 352. 

Histories of Philosophy, 345, 346. 
History, 96, 340, 341, 348. 
Hobbes, 177, 364, 365, 394, 411-413. 
Holderlin, 286. 
Holbach, 190, 474. 
Homer, 9, 16, 91. 
Homoeomeries, 29, 375. 
Hope, 238. 
Huber, 349. 
Hufeland, 257. 
Hugo, 473. 
Humboldt, 257. 

Hume, 181-184, 210, 212, 216, 251, 414- 
416, 420, 422, 423, 454. 455, 456, 465. 
Hutcheson, 181, 416, 444. 
Hyle, 79. 

Hylicists, 6, 13, 21, 23, 30, 32. 
Hypostasis, 80. 

Iamblichus, 12, 139. 

ldaeus, 352. 

Idea, 76, 77-89, 101-105, 108, 316, 329, 

331, 398, 402. 
Ideal, 89, 227, 229. 
Idealism, 125, 176, 192-209. 210, 212, 

217, 244, 248, 251, 253, 259, 287, 291, 

294-298, 299-304, 316, 374, 391, 419, 

420, 431, 435, 476. 
Ideality, 315-316. 
Ideas, 51, 64-68, 70, 72-89, 101-105, 177- 

179, 202, 359, 398, 399. 
Ideation confused, 193. 
Identity, 65, 71, 327, 355, 359, 366, 404, 

434. 

2 



Illumination, 8, 31, 187-192, 207-209, 

210, 381, 416. 
Immaterial principle, 30. 
Immediacy, 329. 

Immortality, 10, 67, 84, 439, 440. 
Imperative, categorical, 214, 233, 421. 
Implicit, 360. 
Import finite, 402. 
Induction, 48, 50, 151. 
Infinite, 10, 365, 366, 401. 
Inherence, 280, 281. 
In-itself, 299. 
Inner, 328. 
Intellect, 8, 10. 
Intellectus, 145. 
Intelligible, principle, 7, 396. 
Intuition, 224, 247, 251. 
Intuitive understanding, 426. 
Ionics, 4, 6, 7, 9-11, 23, 350, 352, 373, 

396, 453, 459. 
Irony, Socratic, 49. 
Isocrates, 35. 
Italics, 11, 373. 

Jacobi, 247-255, 267, 286, 306, 411, 41f>, 

426, 427. 
John, St., 277, 315. 
Judgment, 330. 
Judgment, Kritik of, 215, 217, 24C . 

246. 
Judgment, Esthetic, 241. 
Judgment, Teleological, 241, 244. 
Judgments of explanation (analytic), 

213. 
Judgments of extension (synthetic), 

213. 
Judgments of sensation, 361. 

Kames, Lord, 416. 

Kant, Transition to, 209 ; life, 214 ; 
Kritik of Pure Reason, 217 ; the 
Transcendental iEsthetic, 218 ; the 
Transcendental Analytic, 221 ; the 
Transcendental Dialectic, 226 ; the 
Ideas of Reason, 226 ; Psychological 
Idea, 227 ; Cosmological Idea and 
Antinomies, 22S ; Theological Idea, 
or Ideal of Pure Reason, 229 ; the 
Kritik of Practical Reason, 232 ; Prac- 
tical Analytic, 233 ; Practical Dia- 
lectic, 236 ; Religion within the 
limits of Pure Reason, 238; Kritik 
of Judgment, 240; iEsthetic Critique, 
241 ; Teleological Critique, 244 ; Note 
on, 422-426 ; mentioned, 100, 249, 
251, 253-262, 266, 267, 275, 278, 285, 
286, 288, 290, 295, 323, 347, 374, 385, 
394, 401, 405, 406, 414-416, 419, 422- 
426, 427, 430, 431, 434, 439, 444, 450, 
451, 454, 455, 465, 476. 

Kepler, 150. 

Klopstock, 256. 

Kuights (the), 42. 
H 



482 



INDEX. 



Knowledge, 51, 57, 64, 199, 249, 251, 
259-270. See also Cognition. 

Kritik of Pure Reason, 210, 215, 216, 
217-232. 

Kritik of Practical Reason, 214, 215, 
217 232-238 

Kritik of Judgment, 215, 217, 240-246. 

Krug, 247, 441. 

Laches (the), 63. 

La Grange, 190. 

La Mettrie, 188, 189, 190, 193. 

Laurie, Mr., 444. 

Laws (the), 88, 91. 

Legality, 235. 

Leibnitz, his life, 192 ; the monads, 
194 ; pre-established harmony, 196 ; 
idea of God, 198 ; soul and body, 198 ; 
theory of knowledge, 199 ; the Th6o- 
dicee, 200 ; Note on, 416 ; mentioned, 
190, 191, 201, 202, 203, 204, 207, 210, 
283, 285, 287, 322, 359, 374, 454. 

Leucippus, 24, 272-274. 

Lewes, Mr., Pref., 345-347, 350-353, 
358, 360-365, 371-375, 382, 421, 439, 
446, 447, 454, 457, 461, 462, 464, 466- 
473. 

Life, 331. 

Locke, his life, 177 ; innate ideas, 177 ; 
origin of ideas, 179 ; his followers, 
181 ; Note on, 413-415 ; mentioned, 
181-186, 192, 199, 210, 211, 374, 417, 
454. 

Locomotion, 113, 114. 

Logic, 67-69, 98-101, 124, 131, 132, 221, 
323. 

Love,' 8, 10, 23,376, 379. 

Lucretius, 138. 

Lyceum, 95. 

Lycon, 43. 

Lysis (the), 63. 

Magnitude, 205, 325. 

Maieutics, 49, 392. 

Male (the), 111. 

Malebranche, 164-168, 407-408, 414. 

Man, 31, 35, 113-115, 409. 

Mandeville, 415. 

Manifestation, 327. 

Many, 19, 325. 

Marbach, 346, 

Marcus, 304. 

Marriage, 339. 

Materialism, 125, 184, 188-192, 210. 

Mathematics, 68, 69, 98. 

Matter, 6, 76, 79, 82, 101, 102, 105-108, 

164, 166, 167, 171-173, 288, 298, 328, 

354, 355, 399, 400, 418. 
Matters of fact, 415. 
Maurice, Mr., 345, 346. 
Maxim3 of volition, 234. 
Mayer, 169. 
Means competent, 117. 



Measure, 325. 

Mechanical explanation, 23, 27. 

Mechanics, 331, 332. 

Medici (the), 148. 

Megarics, 53, 56-58, 59, 64, 65, 87, 122. 

Meier, 207. 

Melanchthon, 148. 

Melissus, 15, 357, 358, 361. 

Melitus, 43. 

Mendelssohn, 208, 249. 

Meno (the), 44. 

Metaphysic, 98-111, 205, 218, 226, 279, 

401, 453. 
Metaphysics (Aristotle's), 95, 99, 101. 
Method, 49, 262, 316-318, 323, 431, 434. 
Michelet, 346, 372. 
Mill, Mr., 346, 364-366, 382, 446-448, 

450-467. 
Millet (problem), 368, 369. 
Milton, 367. 
Mind, 8, 28-30, 164, 166, 167, 171-173, 

288-298, 375, 396, 421. 
Modes, 179. 
Modus, 173, 408, 433. 
Monads, 194-196, 281, 282, 374. 
Monism, 15, 19, 138, 144. 
Monotheism, 363. 
Moralitat, 48, 337, 395, 398. 
Moral awe, 235, 238. 
Moral law, 233. 

Moral proof for God's existence, 237. 
Morals, 52. See also Ethics. 
More, Henry, 415. 
Morell, Dr., 462. 
Motion, 112, 205, 363-371, 378. 
Motives, 233, 234. 
Movement in matter, 10, 17, IS, 22, 23, 

26, 28. 
Music, 342. 
Mutation, 280, 282. 
Mysticism, 153, 304. 
Mythical cosmogonies, 5, 9. 
Mythological explanation, 396. 
Mythology, 306-315. 

Naturalism, 26. 

Nature, 81, 113, 288, 331, 332, 348. 

Nature, works on, 20, 23, 28, 36. 

Necessity, 8, 26, 328, 415. 

Negation, 317, 324, 398. 

Negative, 327. 

Negativity, 404. 

Neo-Platonism, 6, 12, 122, 138-144, 276, 

287, 3C4. 
Newton, 181, 417, 459. 
Nicomachus, 94, 95. 
Niethammer, 257, 288. 
Nihil est in intellects,, etc., 114, 181, 

184, 417. 
Nominalism, 145-147. 
No/ulw, 36. 

Non-being, 26, 65, 66, 72-74, 398. 
Nothing, 25, 324. 



INDEX. 



483 



Notion, 48, 50, 51, 64, 65, 69, 103-105, 
145, S17, 329, 396, 431, 434, 442, 443, 
445. 

Noumenal, 225, 375, 418, 457. 

Nous, 28, 376-380, 395. 

Novalis, 258. 

Number, 6, 11, 82, 325, 352, 354, 355, 
396. 

Nutrition, 113, 114. 

Oath of the Gods, 356. 

Objectivity, 8, 37, 38, 65, 66, 120-123, 

212, 329, 330, 380-396, 397, 402. 
Objects, a process, 359. 
Obstetrics, spiritual, 40. 
Occam, 146. 
Occasionalism, 165. 
Oceanus, 9. 

Octave, the musical, 83. 
Omnis determinatio, etc., 170. 
One, 15 16, 19, 65, 66, 75, 76, 87, 325, 

352, 359-361, 367, 372. 
Ontological, 205, 405, 406. 
Opinion, 69, 71, 365, 399. 
Optimism, 201. 
Organics, 333. 
Organon (the), 99, 393. 
Origination, 106, 325. 
Ossian, 428. 
Oswald, 184. 
Ott, 471. 
Ovid, 356. 

Paganism, 473-476. 

Painting, 342. 

Paley, 415. 

Pansetius, 122. 

Paracelsus, 154. 

Paradoxes of Zeno, 365. 

Paralogisms of Pure Reason, 227. 

Parenetic, 37, 398. 

Parmenides, 8, 15, 16-18, 20, 22-24, 26, 

75, 77, 78, 280, 283, 357, 358, 361, 362, 

367 421 455 
Parmenides (the), 65, 66, 6S, 73, 75-77. 
Participation, 78. 
Particular, 354. 
Passions (the) 404., 
Pathological, 402, 424. 
Paulus, 286, 311. 
Pausanias, 39. 
Penalty, 337. 
Perception, theory of, 422. 

of Reason, 252. 

Periods, philosophical, 6. 

Peripatetic, 95, 120. 

Personality, 336, 402. 

Peter, St., 315. 

Petrus Lombardus, 144. 

Phsedo (the), 12, 14, 07, 72, 79, 85, 103, 

375, 377. 
Phsedrus (the), 34, 47, 62, 63, 67, 85. 
Phsenarete, 30, 49, 392. 



Phenomenal world, etc., 7, 15, 66, 76, 

78, 101, 225, 432. 
Phenomenologv (the), 318-321, 335, 336. 
Pherecydes, 352. 
Philebus (the), 36, 67, 73, 86. 
Philolaus, 12. 
Philosopher, 353. 
Philosophy, 39, 69, 86, 93, 96, 97, 98, 

131, 174, 204, 205, 341, 343, 347-349, 

403, 406, 414, 428. 

Anaxagorean, 8, 27. 

Atomistic, 7, 25. 

Commencement of, 5, 396. 

Divisions of, 204-205. 

. Eleatic, 6, 14. 

Empedoclean, 7, 22. 

First, 98. 

German, 404, 420. 

Heraclitic, 7, 19. 

Histories of, 345, 346. 

History of (General Idea of the), 

1-5, 347-349. 

Ionic, 6, 9. 

Modern (Transition to), 145-156, 

403. 
Oriental, 5, 349. 

Post- Aristotelian, 120-137, 402. 

Post-Kantian (Transition to), 246. 

Practical, 14, 22, 35, 67, 98, 174, 

205, 214, 232, 270, 285, 336, 444. 

Pre-Socratic, 6-39, 396. 

Pythagorean, 6, 11. 

Scholastic, 5, 144-148, 349. 

Scottish, 184, 416. 

Second, 98. 

Sophistic, 8, 30. 

Theoretical, 67, 98, 204. 

3>wei, 36. 

Physics, 12, 14, 66-69, 81, 98, 111-115, 
124, 125, 131, 132, 333. 

Pineal gland, 162, 405. 

Plato, his life, 58 ; development of his 
writings, etc., 61 ; division of his 
system, 67 ; his dialectics, 69 ; his 
physics, 81 ; his ethics, 86 ; retro- 
spect, 93 ; Note on, 398-399 ; men- 
tioned, 4, 6, 12, 14, 19, 25, 29, 31, 
32, 34, 36, 37, 39, 42, 44, 46, 47, 49, 
51, 57, 94, 96-98, 101-105, 106, 108, 
115, 118-121, 125, 131, 136, 138, 144, 
145, 148, 287, 475, 476. 

Pleasure, 86, 133. 

Plenum, 25, 26. 

Plinv, 134. 

Plotinus, 133, 139-141, 302, 443, 46S. 

Plurality, 65, 66. 

Plutarch, 60. 

Poetry, 342. 

Polemo, 93. 

Politics, 96, 205, 271, 272. 

Polus, 37. 

Polvgnotus, 123. 

Polymath, 25, 33, 37, 19-1 



484 



INDEX. 



Pompey, 124. 

Pomponatius, 147. 

Pope, 421. 

Porch or Portico, 123. 

Porphyry, 12, 139. 

Posidonius, 124. 

Position absolute, 280, 281, 282. 

Positive, 327. 

Positivism, 423, 447-467. 

Possibility, 204, 205, 328. 

Post-Aristotelian philosophy, 120-137, 

402. 
Post-Kantian philosophy, 246. 
Postulates of empirical thought, 225. 
Postulates, practical, 214, 237, 247, 

423, 424, 426, 444. 
Potentiality, 101, 102, 108, 109, 365, 

399, 400. 
Practical philosophy, 14, 22, 35, 67, 98, 

174, 205, 214, 232, 270, 285, 336, 444 
Prantl, 349, 383, 384, 392, 393. 
Prayer, 444. 

Pre-Socratic philosophy, 6-39, 396. 
Presupposition, 163. 
Price, 415. 
Priestley, 415. 
Primal matter, 10, 106. 
Printing press, 148. 
Principle of morals, 234, 273, 424. 
Principles, material, formal, and intel- 
ligible, 396. 
Probability, 137. 
Proclus, 139. 
Prodicus, 33, 34, 37, 39. 
Properties, 328. 
Property, 337. 

Proposition of Descartes, 115. 
Propositions, 99. 
Protagoras, 31, 33-36, 44, 53, 70, 71, 377, 

382, 383, 384, 388, 397. 
Protagoras (the), 36, 63, 64, 66. 
Protreptic, 62, 398. 
Prytanes, 44. 
Psyche, 85, 304. 
Psychology, and psychological, 66, 205, 

206, 213, 217, 226, 283, 335, 336, 375, 

389, 400, 405. 
Ptolemaic system, 83. 
Pyramids, 353. 
Pyrrho, 134-136. 
Pythagoras, 11, 15. 
Pythagoreans, 4, 6, 11-15, 59, 60, 62, 64, 

66, 67, 73, 85, 93, 94, 131, 352, 353, 356, 

357, 360, 396, 438, 453, 455, 459. 
Pythias, 94, 95. 

QUADRUPLICITY, 87. 

Qualities, primary, etc., 374. 
Quality, 324. 
Quantity, 325, 365, 366. 
Quantum, 18, 325. 

Raison suffisante, 198. 



Raisonnement, 96. 

Ramus, 147. 

Rarefaction, 9, 11. 

Rationalism, 437. 

Realism, 30, 47, 145-147, 176-192, 209, 

210, 244, 251, 299-304, 316. 
Reality, 315, 316, 325. 
Reals, 280-285, 428. 
Reason, 28-31, 127, 140-142, 232, 372, 

379, 383, 384, 395, 417, 442. 

Ideas of, 213, 226-232, 237, 247, 253. 

Reciprocity, 225, 266, 329. 

Reflection, 179. 

Reflexion, 326. 

Reformation, 145, 148, 149. 

Regulative, 230, 240, 245, 348. 

Reid, 184, 419, 444, 454. 

Reimarus, 208, 209. 

Reinhold, 247, 261. 

Reuchlin, 148. 

Reuss, 215. 

Relations of ideas, 415. 

Relativity, 63, 65, 70, 368-370, 374, 3S0- 

396. 
Religion, 238, 240, 341, 343, 438. 
Republic (the), 31, 60, 67, 68, 85, 87-S9. 
Repulsion, 325. 
Reserve, 135, 136, 137. 
Revelation, 306-315. 
Revival of letters, 148. 
Right, 270-273, 336. 
Ritter, 346, 351, 381. 
Rixner, 346. 

Romans, the, 137, 138, 402. 
Roscelinus, 145. 
Rosenkranz, 322, 430, 4G9-472 
Rousseau, 182, 209, 215. 
Ruge, 436, 445, 474, 476. 
Rulers ought to be philosophers, 60. 91 . 

Sage (the), 54, 55, 129, 130. 

Salto mortale, 251. 

Scepsis, 279. 

Scepticism, 8, 30, 31, 37, 57, 122, 134, 
139, 150, 202. 

Scepticism, Elder, 134. 

Later, 137. 

Schelling, his life, 286 ; his philosophy, 
first period, 287 ; second period, 290 ; 
philosophy of nature, 291 ; transcen- 
dental philosophy, 294 ; philosophy 
of art, 297 ; third period, 299 ; fourth 
period, 304 ; fifth period, 306 ; Note 
on, 428; mentioned, 156, 248, 254, 
255, 276, 278, 315, 316, 318, 321, 343, 
401, 420, 428, 429, 431, 434, 462. 

Schema, Transcendental, etc., 222. 

Schiller, 235, 246, 257. 

Schlegel, 257, 258. 

Schleiermacher, 56, 258, 346, 351, 352. 

Scholasticism, 5, 143-147, 349. 

School, the Peripatetic, 120. 

Schoolmen, 453. 



INDEX. 



485 



Schopenhaues, 437. 

Kchulze, 247. 

Schwegler, his life, xi. ; works, xii. ; 
character, xiii. ; death, xiv. ; men- 
tioned, Pref. , 345, 346-352, 360, 363, 
372, 373, 380-385, 392, 393, 397, 399, 
401-404, 414-418, 423, 425, 427. 

Science, 69, 72, 77 ; natural, 149, 150. 

Sciences, the classification of, 447, seq. 

Scipio, 124. 

Scotus Erigena, 144. 

Sculpture, 342. 

Secret of Hegel, 365, 419, 433. 

Seelye, Pref. 

Self, 183. 

Self-love, 186, 187, 192, 234. 

Seeming, 17. 

Seneca, 138. 

Sengler, 310. 

Sensation, 35, 70, 71, 113, 114, 179, 
185. 

Sensations, 202. 

Sense, common, 184. 

Sense, inner, 405. 

Senses (the), 371, 373, 374, 375. 

Sensualism, 125, 184, 186, 187. 

Sentences of Lombard, 144. 

Seven Sages (the), 9. 

Sextus Empiricus, 67, 137, 353. 

Shaftesbury, 177. 

Show (Scheiri), 65, 66, 73. 

Sight, 202. 

Sigwart, 346. 

Silence 356. 

Sillographist, 134. 

Simplicius, 357, 376. 

Sittlichkeit, 48, 338, 395, 398, 399. 

Smith, Adam, 416. 

Sociology, 460. 

Socrates, transition to, 37 ; his person- 
ality, 39 ; Socrates and Aristophanes, 
42 ; condemnation of Socrates, 43 ; 
sources of his philosophy, 46; its 
general character, 47 ; the Socratic 
method, 49 ; doctrine of virtue, 51 ; 
Note on, 396 ; mentioned, 4, 6, 8, 12, 
20, 28, 29, 34, 36, 53-59, 61-67, 73, 77, 
85, 87, 93, 94, 104, 115, 116, 118, 136, 
375, 377, 380-382, 392, 394, 398, 438, 
453, 460. 

Socratics, the incomplete, 53. 

Solger, 322. 

Solon, 9. 

Sophist (the), 65, 66, 73, 74. 

Sophistic, 100. 

Sophists, their relation to predecessors, 
30 ; to the general life of the time, 
31 ; their tendencies, 33 ; their his- 
torical significance, 34 ; the indi- 
vidual Sophists, 35 ; Note on, 380 ; 
mentioned, 4, 6, 8, 37, 38, 39, 47, 48, 
51, 56, 62, 63, 64, 73, 86, 121, 122, 352, 
375, 396, 397. 



Sophroniscus, 39. 

Soul, 14, 17, 62, 79, 83, 85, 114, 162, 

185, 188-192, 198, 208, 209. 
Sound, 368. 
Space, 112, 205, 211, 218, 220, 253, 282, 

283, 369, 370, 394, 421. 
Speculative, 353, 401, 406. 
Speusippus, 93. 
Sphairos, 23. 
Spinoza, his life, 168 ; substance, 169 ; 

the attributes, 171 ; the modi, 173 ; 

his practical philosophy, 174 ; Note 

on, 408 ; mentioned, 156, 249, 251, 

255, 267, 287, 298-304, 316, 401,407, 

414, 454. 
Spirit, 331 ; the absolute divine, 109, 

110, 111. 
Stagira, 94. 
Stahi, 310. 
Star-worship, 94. 
State, 67, 86-93, 119, 120, 272, 337, 339, 

340, 394, 395, 410. 
State (So-ness), 325. 
State-philosophy, 429. 
Statesman (the), 60, 65. 
Steinbart, 208. 
2Tep7 ? crt9, 106, 107. 
Stewart, Dugald, 184. 
Stilpo, 57. 

Stoa Pcecile, 123, 136. 
Stockl, 349. 
Stoicism, 20, 57, 122-131, 135, 137, 138, 

139, 403. 
Stones, 11. 
Strabo, 95. 
Strato, 120. 
Strife, 21. 

Sty, Epicurean, 131. 
Style, 35. 
Styx, 356. 
Subjectivity, 8, 30, 31, 65, 66, 120-123, 

212, 329, 380-396, 397, 402. 
Sublime, 241, 242, 243. 
Substance, 101, 161, 169, 179, 180, 181, 

328, 408, 414. 
Substantial, 399. 

Substantiality, 89, 212, 224, 266, 267. 
Sulzer, 208. 

Summum bonum, 86, 116-118, 132, 236. 
Xvvokov, 101, 107. 
Supernatural, 442. 
Suspense, 135-137. 
Swedenborg, 442. 
Swimmer, IJelian, 20. 
Syllogism, 99, 100, 330. 
Symbolism Pythagorean, 13, 14, 
Synthetic, 7, 213, 223, 350, 37b. 
Systeme de la Nature, 190. 

Tabula rasa, 114, 179, 193. 

Taste, 242. 

Tavrov, 74. 

Taylor, Thomas, 373. 



486 



INDEX. 



Teleological, 29, 81, 83, 331. 

Tertium quid, 18. 

Tennemann, 346, 368, 374. 

Tethys, 9. 

Thales, 5, 6, 9, 10, 21, 349-351, 353-356, 

373, 453, 455. 
©aTepoi/, 74. 
Thaumaturgy, 444. 
Theatetus (the), 59, 65, 66, 70, 73, 74, 

386, 393. 
Theodicee, 194, 200, 201. 
Theodorus, 56. 
Theogony, 306. 

Tlieologians, certain ancient, 9. 
Theology, 98, 99, 205, 207, 213, 227. 
Theophrastus, 120, 362, 374, 375. 
Theoretical, 67, 98. 
Theosophy, 350. 
Thetic, 398. 
Theurgy, 139, 143, 444. 
Thing, 328. 

Thing-in-itself, 220, 259. 
Thirty (the), 43, 58. 
This (the), 319. 
Thomas Aquinas, 145, 349. 
Thomson, Sir W., 467. 
Thought, 8, 26, 28, 51, 72, 158, 161, 408. 

409, 431, 432. 
Thought and Being, 16, 53, 362, 363. 
Thought, infinite, 401. 
Thrasybulus, 58. 
Thrasymachus, 37. 
Thtimming, 207. 

Timaeus (the), 67, 68, 72, 79. 81-85. 
Time, 112, 205, 211, 218-220, 253, 279, 

283, 364, 369, 370. 
Timon, 134, 135. 
Touch and sight, 202. 
Transcendental, 210, 218. 
Transformation, 279. 
Transmigration, 14, 62. 
Trendelenburg, 346. 
Trinity, 155, 355, 422, 425, 426. 
Triplicity, 88, 98. 
Tropes, 135. 
True, the, etc. , 67. 
Truths, necessary, 417. 
Tucker, Abraham, 415. 

Ueberweg, 345-346, 349, 403, 404, 405, 
407, 408, 410, 414, 415, 417, 428, 437. 
Understanding, intuitive, 246, 426. 
and reason, 442 



Unio mystica, 442. 
Unity, 65, 66, 428. 
Unity of God, 16, 80, 81, 99, 101, 109- 

111, 125, 126, 142, 154-156, 158-160, 

167-169, 175. 
Unity of thought, etc., 354, 409, 421. 
Universal, 26, 329, 354, 373, 374, 397. 
Universality, 415. 
Universals, 48, 50, 64, 65, 69, 103-105, 

145. 
Universe, 359, 399, 417. 

Vacuum, 25, 26. 

Vanini, 147, 152. 

Vaux, Madame de, 462. 

Vegetable world, 334. 

Veracity of God, 161. 

Vice, 128. 

Virchow, 359. 

Virtue and virtues, 47, 51, 52, 54, 63, 

86-88, 116, 118-119, 124, 127, 128, 132, 

175, 236. 
Vision, theory of, 202. 
Voltaire, 188, 411. 
Voluntas, 145. 
Vorstellung, 50. 
Vortex, 26, 29. 

Water, 9, 11, 353, 396. 

Warm and cold, 362. 

Wendt, 346, 446. 

Whole and parts, 205. 

Will, 174, 233, 285, 405. 

Wise man, the, 54, 55, 129, 130. 

Wissenschaftslehre. 259-270. 

Wolff, 203-207, 210, 323, 417. 

Wollaston, 181. 

World, theories of, 12, 81. 

World-soul, 79, 82, 140-142, 288-298. 

Wrong, 337. 

Xantippe, 40. 

Xenia, Schiller's, on Kant, 235. 
Xenocrates, 67, 68, 93, 94, 95. 
Xenophanes, 15, 20, 357, 358, 361, 363, 

449. 
Xenophon, 34, 37, 39-42, 44-49, 55, 58, 62, 

Zeller, Pref., 345-351, 357, 358, 361, 
362, 372, 373, 375, 376-379, 381, 382. 

Zeno, the Eleatic, 15, 18, 19, 30, 36, 57, 
363-371, 377, 395. 

Zeno (the Stoic), 123, 136. 



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88 PRINCES STREET, EDINBURGH. 



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88 PRINCES STEEET, EDINBURGH. 



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10 EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, 



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88 PRIXCES STREET, EDINBURGH. 11 



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12 EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, 



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88 PEINCES STREET, EDINBURGH. 13 

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14 EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, 

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88 PRINCES STREET, EDINBURGH. 15 



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Nug39 Canorae Medicae. 

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DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO THE QUEEN, 

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Memorials of the Life and Ministry of Charles Calder 

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16 EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, 



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price 3s. 6d. 

Ancient Pillar-Stones of Scotland : 

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Political Sketches of the State of Europe— from 1814-1867. 

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Biographical Annals of the Parish of Colinton. 

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History Rescued, in Answer to e History Vindicated, 5 being 

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The TsTatural or the Supernatural. 

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4. The Enterkin. 5. Wayside Thoughts— Part 2. 

6. Penitentiaries and Reformatories. 7. Notes from Paris. 

8. Essays by an Old Man. 9. Wayside Thoughts — Part 3. 

10. The Influence of the Reformation. 11. The Cattle Plague. 
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14. The Stormontfield Experiments. 15. A Tract for the Times. 
16. Spain in 1866. 17. The Highland Shepherd. 

18. Correlation of Forces. 19. 'Bibliomania.' 

20. A Tract on Twigs. 21. Notes on Old Edinburgh. 

22. Gold-Diggings in Sutherland. 23. Post-Ofiice Telegraphs. 

Poems. 

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Willie Wabster's Wooing and Wedding. 

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The Orkneyinga Saga. 

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Man : Where, Whence, and Whither ? 

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Kidnapping in the South Seas. 

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Practical Water-Farming. 

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Prince Perindo's Wish. 

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18 EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, 



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A Critical History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification 

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begins no earlier than the Middle Ages ; since he considers that in earlier times, 
while the theory of a price paid to Satan was current, there was no real theology 
on the subject. A more thorough historical study of the doctrine of the Atone- 
ment, and a correct understanding and appreciation of the various forms it has 
assumed in different schools, are very much needed in this country." — British and 
Foreign Evangelical Review. 

Reminiscences of the ' Pen ' Polk. 

By one who knew them. 4to, price 2s. 6d. 
Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character. 

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*** The original Edition in 2 vols., with Introductions, price 12s., is still 
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of Scotland. 

Dean Ramsay's Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Charac- 
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Dean Ramsay's Reminiscences. 

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Recess Studies. 

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PRINCES STREET, EDINBURGH. 19 



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A Tale of Ages. 

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The One Church on Earth. How it is manifested, and what 

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Scotland under her Early Kings. 

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and Todds of Irish historical antiquarianism, and the Sharpes, and Kembles, and 
Hardys in England. "—Guardian. 

Doctor Antonio. 

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The Salmon ; 

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A Handbook of the History of Philosophy. 

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Seven Years of a Life. 

A Story. 1 vol. crown Svo, price 7s. Gd. 



20 . EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, 



The Scottish Poor-Laws : Examination of their Policy, 

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Gossip about Letters and Letter- Writers. 

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e Cakes, Leeks, Puddings, and Potatoes.' 

A Lecture on the Nationalities of the United Kingdom. By GEORGE SETON, 
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Culture and Religion. 

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shaded thought and expression which fits Professor Shairp to speak for Culture no 
less than for Religion." — Spectator. 

John Keble : 

An Essay on the Author of the ' Christian Year.' By J. C. SHAIRP, Principal of 
the United College of St. Salvator and St. Leonard, St. Andrews. Fcap. 8vo, price 3s. 

Studies in Poetry and Philosophy. 

By J. C. SHAIRP, Principal of the United College of St. Salvator and , St. 
Leonard, St. Andrews. Second Edition, 1 vol. fcap. 8vo, price 6s. 

A Memoir of the late Sir James Y. Simpson, Bart. M.D. 

By JOHN DUNS, D.D., Professor of Natural Science, New College, Edinburgh. 
Demy 8vo. With Portrait. Price 14s. 

"One of the most charming, instructive, and useful biographies extant."— 
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" Will be much read and admired." — Edinburgh Medical Journal. 

Archaeological Essays by the late Sir James Y. Simpson, 

Bart., M.D., D.C.L. Edited by JOHN STUART, LL.D., Secretary of the Society 
of Antiquaries of Scotland, Author of ' The Sculptured Stones of Scotland/ etc. 
etc. 2 vols. sm. 4to, half Roxburghe, price £2 : 2s. 

The Pour Ancient Books of Wales, 

Containing the Cymric Poems attributed to the Bards of the Sixth Century. By 
WILLIAM F. SKENE. With Maps and Facsimiles. 2 vols. 8vo, price 36s. 

" Mr. Skene's book will, as a matter of course and necessity, find its place on 
the tables of all Celtic antiquarians and scholars." — Archceologia Cambrensi$. 

The Coronation Stone. 

By WILLIAM F. SKENE. Small 4to. With Illustrations in Photography and 
Zincography. Price 6s. 



PEIXCES STREET, EDINBURGH. 21 



Fordun's Chronicle of the Scottish Nation. 

With English Translation. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by WILLIAM 
F. SKENE. 2 vols. Svo, price 30s. 

"Mr. Skene has laid students of Scottish history under a further obligation by 
his careful and scholarlike edition of Fordun's work.'"— Quarterly Review, July 1S73. 

Sketches of Highland Character. ("But the queys was goot.") 

With Seven Full-Page Illustrations by W. RALSTON. Engraved by William 
Ballixgall and J. D. Cooper. 1 vol. 4to, price 6s. 

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Sketches of Highland Character. Cheap Illustrated Edition, small 4to, 
sewed, price Is. 

The Sermon on the Mount. 

By the Rev. WALTER C. SMITH, Author of ' The Bishop's Walk, and other 
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price 6s. 

Disinfectants and Disinfection. 

By Dr. ROBERT AXGUS SMITH. Svo, price 5s. 

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Life and Work at the Great Pyramid. 

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and E., Astronomer-Royal for Scotland. 3 vols, demy Svo, price 56s. 

An Equal-Surface Projection for Maps of the World, and 

its Application to certain Anthropological Questions. By C. PIAZZI SMYTH? 
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Britain's Art Paradise ; or, Notes on some Pictures in the 

Royal Academy, 1871. By the EARL of SOUTHESK. Svo, sewed, price Is. 

Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains. 

Diary and Narrative of Travel, Sport, and Adventure, during a Journey through 
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Sir Walter Scott as a Poet. 

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22 EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, 

Ruined Castles, Monuments of Former Men, in the Vicinity 

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Memoir of Sir James Dalrymple, First Viscount Stair, 

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History Vindicated in the Case of the Wigtown Martyrs. 

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Dugald Stewart's Collected Works. 

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Vol. I.— Dissertation. Vols. II. III. and IV.— Elements of the Philosophy 
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Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man. Vols. VIII. and Dp— 
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The Procession of Pope Clement VII. and the Emperor 

Charles V., after the Emperor's Coronation at Bologna, on the 24th February 1530, 
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Jerrold, Tennyson, Macaulay, and other Critical Essays. 

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Songs of the Seasons. 

By THOMAS TOD STODDART, Author of 'The Angler's Companion.' Crown 
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Christ the Consoler; 

Or, Scriptures, Hymns, and Prayers, for Times of Trouble and Sorrow. Selected and 
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A Lost Chapter in the History of Mary Queen of Scots Re- 
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4to, price 12s. 6d. 

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Memoir of James Syme, late Professor of Clinical Surgery in 

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The History of English Literature. 

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Thermodynamics. 

By P. G. TAIT, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. 
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Sales Attici : 

Or, The Maxims, Witty and Wise, of Athenian Tragic Drama. By D'ARCY WEXT- 
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price 9s. 

Two Little Rabbits, or the Sad Story of Whitetail. 

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Hand-Book of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1872. 

Containing— I. A digest of the Act, with subjects grouped for the convenience of 
School Boards. II. Copy of the Act, with Explanatory Notes. III. The Incur- 



_k_ 





24 EDMONSTOJST AND DOUGLAS. 



porated Acts, Industrial Schools' Act, etc., and Index. By JAMES TOD, Advo- 
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Travels by Umbra. 8vo, price ios. 6d. 
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The Merchant's Sermon and other Stories. 

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A History of the Battle of Bannockburn, fought A.D. 1314. 

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engaged in that Conflict. By ROBERT WHITE, Author of 4 A History of the 
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Dante's— The Inferno. 

Translated line for line by W. P. WILKIE, Advocate. Fcap. 8vo, price 5s. 
Researches on Colour-Blindness. 

With a Supplement on the danger attending the present system of Railway and 
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Wordsworth's Tour in Scotland in 1803, in company with 

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Might not that wonderful Journal even yet be given entire, or nearly so, to the 
world?" — North British Review. 

An Historical Sketch of the French Bar, from its Origin to 

the Present Day. By ARCHIBALD YOUNG, Advocate. Demy 8vo, price 7s, 6d. 

" A useful contribution to our knowledge of the leading French politicians of 
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Notes on the Scotch Salmon Fishery Acts ol 1862 and 1868. 

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